Airports And Airlines: Developing Services And Creating New Air Routes

Identifying different types of airports

Discuss how airports are developing services and working with airlines to create new air routes

• Identify the different types of airports

• Identify different types of airline partner

• Discuss a range of airport services and how airports communicate and distribute those services to customers

• Provide supporting examples of how airports are working with airlines to create services that help to generate new routes

Abeyratne (2012) has identified that there are two types of airports such as towered and non-towered. These two are further divided into Civil airports, Military Airports, and Private airports. The below-mentioned table will help to understand the details of the classification.

Classification of the airports	Hub Type	The Common Name
Commercial Service: Publicly-owned airports that have near about 2500 passengers boarding in each calendar year as well as receive scheduled passenger services (Barros & Couto, 2013)	Primary Service: This type has more than 10000 passengers boarding every year (Abeyratne 2012)	Large (1% and more) (Barros & Couto, 2013)	Large Hub
Medium (Minimum 0.25%, but not more than 1%) (Barros & Couto, 2013)	Medium Hub
Small (Minimum 0.05% but less than 0.25%) (Barros & Couto, 2013)	Small Hub
Non-hub (More than 10000 but less than 0.05%) (Barros & Couto, 2013)	Non-hub Primary
Non-Primary	Non-hub (Minimum 2500 and not more than 10000) (Barros & Couto, 2013)	Non-primary Commercial services
Non-Primary (Except the commercial service)	Not really applicable	Reliever
General Aviation

Therefore, from the above table, different types of airports have been explained here, and it has been found that the civil airports are open to the public use and on the other hand, the army as well as some other agencies of the Federal Government (Barros & Couto, 2013) operate military airports.

It has been found that JetBlue has been on a partnering roll lately. It has kept announcing the new partnerships and codeshares, and in this case, the latest is Japan Airlines and Emirates. However, it can be said that not all the partnerships are the same, there are three highly distinct types of partnership, and these have been discussed here. Interline is one of the oldest partnerships, and this is never considered as one of the big deals (Curran, 2012). However, it has been found that most of the airlines have agreements with them to work together in the field of ticketing and baggage.

Most of the people cannot think that America and United States to be partners, but in reality, they are partners at the basic level. Apart from Interline, Codeshares agreement includes several benefits of the interline agreements and JetBlue is one of the recent examples in this regards. Curran & Fischer (2012) has said that while interline and codeshares are interrelated; another frequent flier partnership is not required. However, it can be said that sometimes, these types of flier partnership can become highly confusing, as they are not always all surrounding (Halpern & Graham, 2015).

All the airports companies are committed to providing best services to their customers. Therefore, it can be said that most of the airport companies are dedicated to providing best possible services for the visitors at the airport, including both the passengers as well as  people who are accompanying them to the airport. It has been found that this commitment is offered in partnership with some other service providers like airlines handling agents, some government agencies, and concessionaries. Most of the airline companies put their best efforts to deliver a clean as well as a welcoming environment with the help of the customer feedback analysis and extensive market research (Guo, Cheng & Jiang, 2014). Therefore, the airline companies make sure of the fact that customer care staffs are available throughout the airport concourse to assist the visitors as well as the passengers.

Identifying different types airline partners

To do this, the airline companies locate their customer information desk at the arrival points, where the official staffs of the company are present to assist them with any queries (Jorge-CalderoÌ, 2012). In this part, some of the roles and the responsibilities of the customer service have been mentioned, and they are as follows.

• Checking of the passengers
• Ticketing of the passengers
• Lost and found cases ()
• Some indiscretion handling like hotel accommodation and meal vouchers.
• Security screening for the passengers
• Some special services

In general, the passengers check into the airport along with their baggage, so that they can travel. . Most importantly, the passengers collect their boarding passes. In this case, the customer service providers assist in the check in of the passengers and help them with the help service check-in services. In this case, the service providers are responsible for looking after the fact that all the passengers have the correct document for their flight and the entire luggage is weighted and checked in. The customer service agents communicate with the aircraft dispatchers to ensure that the boarding starts at the correct time and communicate any problem that they might have during traveling. These service providers help the passengers to check the boarding cards and the photographic identification before the passengers are step aboard the aircraft (Jorge-CalderoÌ, 2012).

Schramm (2012) has said that once all the passengers have safely boarded the plane, the service providers inform the aircraft dispatchers and the passenger service is then passed over to the Flight Cabin Crew. Taylor & McMillan (2012) have shown that the customer service agents are responsible to assist the passengers in the aircraft as well as guide them towards immigration. Another major service provided by the customer service agents are that they must be present at the baggage reclaim area till all the luggage is collected from the passengers. If in between the time , any problem arises, they are required to fill a Property Irregularity Form with the passenger before passing it on to a superior member or staff of the concerned company (Abeyratne, 2012). 

Figure 1: Stages of Customer Service Providers

(Source: Abeyratne, 2012)

The entire process of the customer services can be understood with the help of the above-shown diagram. . The airport companies try to operate 24 hours a day and provide the services to the customers. The service providers try to increase the airline punctuality indexes with the help of reduction in the lay over delays. Apart from that, it can be said that the airways are required to provide emergency services to the customers anytime. If any passenger falls sick, the service providers are required to take care of the passenger and arrange proper medication facilities for the passenger. In this regard, the cabin crew is responsible for providing proper services to the passengers. Before the passengers enter the aircraft, they start their duties before 1 hour and 30 minutes (Abeyratne, 2012).

Discussing a range of the airport services

They are required to communicate with the passengers regarding the pre-flight briefing. Once the passengers embark the aircraft, they are responsible for carrying out the security check of the cabin. They are supposed to report any severe cabin issues to the senior levels and help them to find out some best-fitted results. Apart from that, they are responsible to prepare the cabin for the passengers as well as liaise with the grounds staff, so that the boarding can commence (Schramm, 2012). The cabin crew of reputed airline companies is responsible to direct the passengers to their seats as well as to assist the passengers to stow their bags. The safety announcement and proper presentation, sometimes video demonstration is given by the cabin crew to the passengers in the aircraft. During the flight, the cabin crew is required to ensure that all the requirements of the passengers are properly taken care and food and drinks are well served.. They are required to communicate with the passengers accordingly so that there is no chance of miscommunication (Abeyratne, 2012).

To find out new air routes, airports and communities must focus on route economics. There are some other factors, which can help an airline service to find out new routes like, precise and effective route forecast and establishing appropriate financial incentives (Starkie, 2012). Inter Vistas is a company that helps airlines to figure out the new route and jump into a new market.

Having an excellent experience in network planning and sales marketing in competitive airline industry, Inter Vistas is capable of combining sophisticated network planning tools with their experience to establish an effective airline relationship which will provide detailed route forecasts, positive business case proposals and effective financial guidance, important to secure new air services (Halpern and Graham, 2015).  Inter Vista mainly provides Air Service Development (ASD) to several airports to figure out new routes where the airline company can increase their profitability. Inter Vista follows some core components with the airports and airlines to help them figuring out new air routes. They are,

Air Service Strategy can help airports to realize significant growth in traffic and revenue by evaluating organized strategic air service enhancement plans. Some air service strategies, that airports are using with the help of Inter Vista to support the airlines, are,

ASD Strategies	Goals/objectives
Service development strategies	Air service diagnostics Identify new routes and target airlines Implement new plans strategically
Hub improvement strategies	Connect time reduction assessments Reorganizing flight bank
Alliance analysis	Traffic flow forecast Giving more time to Code share functions
Alliance consolidation analysis	Impacts of merging Bankruptcies and liquidation Contingency plans for air services
New entrant assessment	Effect on incumbents Stimulation and cannibalization
Airport rivalry assessment	Catchment area expansion or retention Bridging gateway competition

Table 1: Air service strategies

(Source: Starkie, 2012)

For example, in December 2015, Lufthansa opened a new route to Finland with one weekly Munich-Kittila flight. An Airbus A320 with 168 seats will operate on this route (Alliance, 2013). Before opening this new route, the airlines company took some strategies to find out whether this is a good idea or not. The strategies are,

• Lufthansa has a special department to analyze passenger flow and anticipate future demand. They figured out that many people were traveling to Kittila, but there was no scheduled flight for that. Sp Lufthansa planned to provide schedules flight ().
   
• They found that for some reasons, a flight between Munich and Kittila was not chosen but Kittila could open doors to destinations like Lapland. Besides, Levi, a very well known ski-resort is just 1- kilometers away from the airport.
   
• Munich is connected with almost anywhere in the world. So connecting Munich- and Kittila gave the customers an advantage to riding any flight when returning from Kittila to fly back to their respective homes ().
   
• Lufthansa figured out that opening this route could help them to increase their profitability as Kittila is a unique destination above the polar circle, which is practically an exotic destination. They understood that Kittila will attract plenty of leisure travelers who want to see the Northern Lights and enjoy the winter activities Lapland can offer.

 Air India is planning to make new routes to San Francisco and Toronto. From their evaluations, Air India found out that presently there is no flight flying non-stop to San Francisco and Toronto (Ali, 2015).  Air India understood that it could open a new market for their organization, which means more profitability.

There are some other strategies where airports are working on with airlines to figure out new routes.  It is the job of airports to develop conservative, moderate, and aggressive route allocation strategies for the airlines (Ali, 2015).Based on the data, the airline can choose the best route for every flight. They might only differ in how they will react to an oversubscribed crowd.  The aggressive strategy is one of the simplest strategies that an airport can suggest to the airlines.  In this strategy, the airports always request the airlines to choose the best route in spite of being oversubscribed (Sriram and Shapiro, 2015). This strategy works in a hope that maybe other airlines will choose alternative routes and solve the problem.  However, there is a risk in this strategy that the route will remain oversubscribed the amount of profitability will be comparatively low.

References

Abeyratne, R. (2012). Air navigation law. Berlin: Springer.

Abeyratne, R. (2012). Strategic issues in air transport. Berlin: Springer.

Ali, S. (2015). A comparative study of the financial performance of Air India Corporation and Indian Airlines Corporation.

Alliance, S. (2013). Lufthansa Airlines. Amsterdam: Ios Press.

Barros, C., & Couto, E. (2013). Corrigendum to “Productivity analysis of European airlines, 2000–2011â€Ã‚ [J. Air Transp. Manage. 31 (2013) 11“13]. Journal Of Air Transport Management, 32, 95. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jairtraman.2013.06.017

Curran, R. (2012). Air transport and operations. Amsterdam: Ios Press.

Curran, R., & Fischer, L. (2012). Air transport and operations. Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Guo, Z., Chen, Y., Cheng, M., & Jiang, H. (2014). Near-surface air temperature retrieval from Chinese Geostationary FengYun Meteorological Satellite (FY-2C) data. International Journal Of Remote Sensing, 35(10), 3892-3914. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2014.919674

Halpern, N., & Graham, A. (2015). Airport route development: A survey of current practice. Tourism Management, 46, 213-221.

Jorge-CalderoÌÂÂ2012. Aviation Investment. London:SAGE

Malina, R., Albers, S. and Kroll, N., 2012. Airport incentive programmes: a European perspective. Transport Reviews, 32(4), pp.435-453.

Meyer, D., Saighi, B., & Tarnai, G. (2008). Safety management of traffic growth in air transportation. Periodica Polytechnica Transportation Engineering, 36(1-2), 69. https://dx.doi.org/10.3311/pp.tr.2008-1-2.13

Schramm, H. (2012). Freight forwarder’s intermediary role in multimodal transport chains. Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag.

Sriram, V., & Shapiro, H. (2015). The Effects of Size and Strategy on Performance in the Air Express Service Industry. In Proceedings of the 1988 International Conference of Services Marketing (pp. 356-364). Springer International Publishing.

Starkie, D. (2012). European airports and airlines: Evolving relationships and the regulatory implications. Journal of Air Transport Management, 21, 40-49.

Taylor, E., & McMillan, 2012.  A. Air quality management. Amsterdam: Ios Press.

Yang, C. W., Lu, J. L., & Hsu, C. Y. (2014). Modeling joint airport and route choice behavior for international and metropolitan airports. Journal of Air Transport Management, 39, 89-95.