Birmingham International Airport Essay

In the space of beneficial 30 legal proceeding e realistic weekday, around 5.00 in the evening, around 20 flights arrive and entrust from the Eurohub Terminal. At the same cartridge clip, aircraft ar arriving and leaving from the Main Terminal adjoining to the Eurohub. Across the locomoteway and acres of tarmac, at the site of the original airdrome, the overnight freight operation is still beginning to wake up with the arriver of stave and the preparations for the first aircraft from Europe or the United States.Some of the 7,000 staff from the 150 organisations based at Birmingham International Airport (BIA) see to the need of their customers. The baggage handling operation is sorting, checking and dispatching bags to the many departing aircraft. The ground crews ar lading and unloading aircraft, putting meals on board, filming the fuel tanks and cleaning aircraft during their sketch spell at the airbridge. The airlines ticketing staffs are dealing with lines of rider s, each of whom may engage a contrastive uttermost(a)(a) destination.The information desk is amply staffed, dealing with the many queries, such(prenominal) as batch wanting to have it off if their plane is on time, the location of a bank or hotel, or trying to march come in how to every(prenominal)ow by road or rail to their final destination. Passengers flow with the lounges, passport control and security checks, and use toilets, calling free shops and restaurants, all of which have to be kept clean and stocked for their convenience. every(prenominal) of these activities, and more, are coordinated by BIAs Operations Director, Richard Heard. Richard explains his purposeOut of all the people that work at the airport, BIA employs virtually 700 and I oversee round 600 of them. These trading trading operations people are basically refer with the day-to-day running of the airport and the short and medium-term operational be after. This includes a alone raft of th ings on the airfield and in and around the terminals. The air-field side of things basically involves maintaining the runways, agreeing s plug allocations with the airlines, developing and implementing the safety steering systems and keep oning the fire crews fully trained. For example, this is a heavily regulated area so we work very closely with the Civil Aviation Authority. The other side of the operation is active managing the terminal buildings and other facilities. This is almost like running a shop centre with its focus on customer service but with fussy security arrangements. Airport security is a key task which we run in-house, employing about 300 people. I overly have a facilities management team and an engineering services team that look after the maintenance of the whole site.In terms of long-term design and development, we set up teams to oversee the planning of newly building projects, such as new catering outlets, car parks and people mover systems. This plan u ses the forecasts of passenger numbers and guides our decisions about what to build and when, and how to pay for it. We have been growing at a rate of about 10 per cent a category over the last 10 years. In 2000 the airport handled 7.6 million passengers and our offset is set to continue, with an anticipated 10 million passengers expected to travel with Birmingham by 2005. This plan involves serious money we are talking about a capital plan of about 50 million a year over the next 15 years. This is all very often driven by operational needs. Managing and developing the airports operations are huge challenges.One of the major tasks for operations is not fairish to provide the infrastructure for all the other organisations on site such as airlines, handling agents, retailers, cargo handlers but excessively to provide the leading and coordination for them. T here are also groups off site, such as society groups, which we liaise with as we work to monitor and improve the envir onment. My personal problem is about coordination and setting the safety and customer service standards for everyone to adhere to.All of us from the different organisations try to work to stay puther as a team and there is a great community spirit here that has built up over the years. Everyone wants their own bit to work easy and the whole thing to work well together. We all have a great understanding of everyones problems and there is an excellent spirit of cooperation.The real secret of managing operations, if you are ever spill to sleep at night, is to serve sure you have really good processes and procedures in dwelling house. We enkindlet have people making it up on the spot. Everything has to be conceit through and tried and tested. We spend a great deal of time reviewing and developing processes. We have to have procedures for fires, evacuations, bomb threats, ill passengers and even deaths in the terminal. Unfortunately, we do have medical emergencies, not surprising since we have about 30,000 people passing through the airport every day in the summer.Another key task is operational planning. We do this on an yearly basis. Operational planning is about making the operation as in force(p) as possible by working out how we can beat out allocate our infrastructure to the airlines. For example, we need to decide who is going to get the airbridges, who is going to get certain stands, who is going to have their passengers bussed to the terminal at degree times and so on. However, you have to remember that the operational plans are just that and as ever, things go wrong schedules fall apart because of plane delays or mechanical problems, for example. So we also have terminal duty passenger cars whose argument it is to sort out the day-to-day operational problems. Our team of terminal managers covers the airport 24 hours a day, every day of the week, with one senior manager overseeing each shift.Many of the things that happen are recurring problem s, such as delays or diversions and you know you will end up with a lot of passengers waiting around a lot longer than they want to. The billet of the duty manager is to coordinate all our efforts, ensuring that the catering people know whats happening and making sure our information services people know so they can tell the passengers, for example. The terminal managers need to keep their own ears and eyes open.Passengers may report that they have seen someone playacting suspiciously and the managers need to know what to do. When passengers get off the plane and their bags are not there, although its the responsibility of the airlines or their handling agents, our people may have to pick up the pieces. When people try taking interdict items through security, such as a family heirloom with a large sheer blade, we have to explain patiently to them that they have to leave it with us. The terminal managers also have to deal with major accompanyings things like bomb threats or, li ke last year, when Spanish coach drivers went on strike leaving many passengers separated at the airport. The job of the terminal manager is to sort it all out and make sure everyone knows what is happening. It involves a great deal of common champion but it is not easy. If you do an evacuation, for example, everyone will be at different stages in the passenger processing and security dynamic headroom procedures, so when the incident is over, we have to try and put them all back where they came from without mixing them up or making them start the process againWe have the equivalent weight of the terminal duty managers looking after the airfield side operations duty managers. Their job is about dealing with the day-to-day problems, such as changing stand allocations when delays occur or arranging snow headroom if we have a sudden fall. Again plans are in place and everything has to be public opinion through. We also have hebdomadally communication meetings when we get the opera tions and duty managers to work with the operational planning department.Our mission is to be the best regional airport in Europe. To do this we need continually to try and improve everything we do. It sounds simple, but it is not easy. For example, we have almost no capacity at peak times, that is between 7.00 a.m. and 8.00 a.m. and between 5.00 p.m. and 6.00 p.m. when we are bustling with short-haul European traffic, so we are trying to encourage other airlines to fill in the off-peak times. This is ideal for long-haul operators and we now have flights to South East Asia and America, and just last year we added an Emirates flight to Dubai. This allows us to use the middle of the day when we have runway and terminal capacity and it suits everybody as we can all make better use of our facilities.Running an airport is a enrapturing and exciting challenge. No two days are the same. We know that we can make a real difference to our customers, both passengers and airlines, by what we do. We also make a major contribution to the force on the local economy by encouraging inward enthronization and exports. As an operations manager, my job is to make it all happen. Its afantastic opportunity and it really does make a difference its greatLong-term issues are mostly derived from day-to-day tasks which are not addressed fitly and get accumulated into a bigger problem. For example, the recurring delays and arranging for snow clearance are common problems, operations duty managers must have a good plan in place so everything is thought through and covered avoiding any unanticipated events. Richard is open to handle this through weekly communication meetings where the operations and duty managers work work with the operational planning department. It is through interaction and communication that allows Richard to have a better overview of what is presently happening so long-term plan can be thought off.Another example, the airport is trying to encourage other air lines to fill in their off-peak times to fully utilize their resources. This is also a day-to-day honoring where a long-term plan is being drawn out. It is apparent that Richard is able to oversee the day-to-day tasks and manage long-term issues through communication and proper operational planning. It is with planning, he is able to anticipate what could go wrong in front it could happen or becomes a big issue. Through operational planning the airport is able to make a major contribution to the impact on the local economy by encouraging inward investment and exports.