RFID + Toilet at Airports= Revenue

RFID is a new technology and people keep on talking about the benefits it can bring to the airport operations both in efficiency and revenue generation. I was just wondering how much we can stretch the use of this technology. This idea is inspired from reading Bogus Talk too seriously in Passenger Terminal World.

It is now common to visualize RFID activated boarding passes for better reconciliation of passenger and also to keep track of passenger activities inside the terminal. I have been thinking about what will be the outcome of such technology, will it be considered as intrusion to private space as the operator will know where the passenger is and what he bought or what he didn’t.

I have noticed that airports don’t miss a single blank wall for generating revenue (advertisement). But there is one space which is not yet captivated!! “Back of the toilet door”. I am yet to encounter a toilet door pasted with some kind of add campaign and that brought me to this interesting idea of putting advert on the back of the toilet cubicle door, and that will be more interesting if it was 100% relevant to the person sitting on the toilet seat!!

Okay now I know this is what the advertising is visualized as…100% personalized (like the text adds on the side bar) but toilet seat is like having one to one conversation. RFID enabled boarding pass can be very helpful in this. The person swipes his boarding pass to enter the cubicle, and thus it has the information who is seating on the toilet seat. There could be an LCD screen wired to an add server. As soon as the door is locked, the LCD screen comes to life. It will show the ads totally relevant to that person as I am assuming that personal database can be linked to the boarding card if it is RFID enabled. Bingo!!!! You can charm the passenger or irritate him. If he wants to avoid it he can switch of the screen!!! That would make one inane and compulsory act of going to toilet more refreshing and revenue generating!!! The LCD ads will have soothing music that the passenger can listen too…and the screen switches off as soon as the Cubicle is unlocked!! The only downside might be that we might get too many late passengers and might have to look for the missing passenger in toilets!! But wait…… you can flash the time for Flight as you know who is in front of the Screen!!! That will be extra revenue for the airport and some entertainment for the passenger!!!

Airport Self Service Check-in Simulations

Simulation models are becoming essential for the estimating the requirements for Airports. I was interested in finding out how it works and decided to develop one for my self. The only problem was what tool should I use for the same. After looking for various possiblilities like MATLAB or Witness, I decided the one most widely available and easily understood by all; Excel. Now the only issue was how valid it will be to use it for the simulation of complex process of Airport Check-in. I have simulated only the Check-in process with Check-in Desks, Kiosks and Web Check-in. The results were interesting and I thought it will be very nice to share with some of you, thus decided to write a blog on the same. This was part of my MSc Thesis at Cranfield University and I am awaiting results.I have used Excel 2007 to make the model and thus the files does not have backward compatibility. I am sharing the user guide and kind of things that can be achieved by the model. I can forward the file with anyone who wants to know more about it. Leave a comment or two and I will get back to you very soon.

The Simulation model is designed in MS Office Excel 2007.The simulation model simulates the check-in process at airport with self-service and web check-in.It is designed to estimate the requirements for a two step self service check-in, which includes kiosks and bag drop-off at the airport.The model enables the users to analyze the impacts of the changes made in resources and estimate the requirements of check-in counters, kiosks and bag drop-off.The structure of the model, the inputs required and interpretation of results have been explained to enable the user to get the maximum utility from the model.

The model has been kept as simple as possible and there is no additional software or macros required to run the simulation.The model is limited to the size of the inputs. The model can only compute for maximum 2500 Peak hour passengers or maximum resources of 25 in each mode.

The model can determine the average queuing time for passengers, determine the resources required to process the total passengers with various combination of resources possible. The simulation model can also determine the Fast Bag drop off which is big unknown for the airports right now.

The model was developed after collecting data from three airports. It was noticed that the queuing at airport was determined by the arrival profiles at the airport. Thus the model was designed so that the airport can modify the arrival profile to suit the local situations. It was observed that there are in particular three types of arrival profiles as leisure, business and mixed.

During the development of model various options were evaluated and other variables like processing times and arrival in groups were also tested. It was observed that other variables did not affect the queuing at the check-in desk to a great extent, thus those were not included as variables that a user can modify easily. The model still addresses the variability in processing times and number of bags per person.

The results were interesting and various scenarios were tested to check the sensitivity of the model. The model was able to replicate the as is scenarios and also was able to provide the logical answers to the porblem of exact resources. The conclusion was that self-service check-in can be very useful to the airports with more business travellers or passengers with less bags. It was noticed that the limiting factor was the fast bag drop-off and not the CUSS Check-ins.

I would be glad to share more information and knowledge with anyone and discuss more about the details if you are interested. Thanks for reading and I will appreciate your inputs!!!