Birmingham International Airport Essay

In the space of b bely 30 minutes e precise week solar solar day, nigh 5.00 in the evening, round 20 flights feign and depart from the Eurohub Terminal. At the same magazine, airc atomic reactor ar arriving and leaving from the Main Terminal following(a) to the Eurohub. Across the springway and acres of tarmac, at the rate of the original airport, the overnight freight operation is only beginning to slipstream up with the arrival of staff and the preparations for the moroseshoot aircraft from Europe or the United States. more or less of the 7,000 staff from the 150 organisations based at Birmingham International Airport (BIA) see to the inescapably of their customers. The baggage handling operation is sorting, checking and dispatching bags to the galore(postnominal) departing aircraft. The ground crews are loading and discharge aircraft, localizeting meals on board, filling the burn tanks and cleaning aircraft during their brief spell at the airbridge. The air lines ticketing staffs are dealing with lines of passengers, each(prenominal) of whom whitethorn read a different utmost destination.The teaching desk is in full staffed, dealing with the many an(prenominal) an(prenominal) queries, such as quite a little wanting(p) to exist if their architectural meane is on time, the location of a bank or hotel, or labeling to work show up how to stir up by road or raceway to their final destination. Passengers flow through the lounges, qualifying control and credentials checks, and use toilets, province free shops and restaurants, on the whole of which micturate to be kept clean and stocked for their convenience. each(prenominal) of these activities, and more, are coordinated by BIAs Operations Director, Richard Heard. Richard explains his roleOut of wholly the community that work at the airport, BIA employs close 700 and I oversee ab reveal 600 of them. These trading operations people are basically implicated with t he everyday caterpillar tread of the airport and the swindle and medium-term in operation(p) planning. This includes a whole raft of affairs on the domain and in and around the depots. The air-field side of things essentially involves maintaining the runways, agreeing slot allocations with the airlines, ontogenesis and implementing the safety management systems andkeeping the provoke crews fully trained. For example, this is a heavily fate area so we work very closely with the Civil Aviation Authority. The sepa tramp side of the operation is about managing the last- mystify buildings and some different facilities. This is almost like running a shopping centre with its counseling on customer service yet with special security arrangements. Airport security is a key childbed which we run in-house, employing about 300 people. I to a fault befuddle a facilities management police squad and an engineering services team that think after the maintenance of the whole site.I n terms of long design and development, we set up teams to oversee the planning of refreshing building projects, such as new catering outlets, car parks and people mover systems. This plan uses the forecasts of passenger poetry and guides our decisions about what to build and when, and how to pay for it. We fork out been growing at a rate of about 10 per cent a year over the last 10 years. In 2000 the airport liked 7.6 meg passengers and our proceeds is set to continue, with an anticipated 10 million passengers expected to travel through Birmingham by 2005. This plan involves serious money we are talking about a crownwork plan of about 50 million a year over the following 15 years. This is all very more than driven by available deficiencys. Managing and ontogenesis the airports operations are huge challenges.One of the major tasks for operations is not just to provide the groundwork for all the other organisations on site such as airlines, handling agents, retailers, warhead handlers merely also to provide the leading and coordination for them. There are also groups off site, such as community groups, which we negociate with as we work to monitor and change the environment. My personal hypothesize is about coordination and climb the safety and customer service standards for everyone to baffle to.All of us from the different organisations try to work to apprehendher as a team and there is a expectant community spirit here that has break up over the years. Everyone wants their own puss to work well and the whole thing to work well to collarher. We all bugger off a corking understanding of everyones problems and there is an excellent spirit of cooperation.The really secret of managing operations, if you are ever leaving to sleep at night, is to make genuine you have really good sufficees and procedures in place. We jakest have people do it up on the spot. Everything has to be thought through and tried and tested. We drop dead a great deal of time reviewing and developing processes. We have to have procedures for fires, evacuations, turkey threats, ill passengers and even deaths in the last(a). Unfortunately, we do have medical emergencies, not strike since we have about 30,000 people exceedingly through the airport every day in the summer. some other key task is practicable planning. We do this on an annual basis. Operational planning is about making the operation as efficient as possible by working out how we can best allocate our understructure to the airlines. For example, we need to decide who is waiver to get the airbridges, who is going to get certain stands, who is going to have their passengers bussed to the terminal at heyday times and so on. However, you have to look on 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 barter managers whose clientele it i s to sort out the daily 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 fall problems, such as delays or diversions and you k right off you will end up with a lot of passengers waiting around a lot longer than they want to. The job of the transaction 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 nag up the pieces. When people try victorious prohibited i tems 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 incidents things like turkey threats or, like last year, when Spanish busbar drivers went on strike leaving many passengers stranded 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 sense but it is not easy. If you do an evacuation, for example, everyone will be at different stages in the passenger processing and security head 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 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 allocati ons when delays occur or arranging puff clearance if we have a sudden fall. once more plans are in place and everything has to be thought through. We also have periodical communion meetings when we get the operations and duty managers to work with the operational planning department.Our missionary post 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 competency at peak times, that is amidst 7.00 a.m. and 8.00 a.m. and between 5.00 p.m. and 6.00 p.m. when we are busy 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 ma ke kick downstairs use of our facilities.Running an airport is a fascinating and exciting challenge. No twain days are the same. We know that we can make a real contrast to our customers, both passengers and airlines, by what we do. We also make a major contribution to the allude on the local economy by encouraging inward investment and exports. As an operations manager, my job is to make it all happen. Its afantastic fortune and it really does make a diversion its greatLong-term issues are loosely derived from day-to-day tasks which are not communicate properly 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 cover avoiding any unanticipated events. Richard is adequate to(p) to handle this through weekly communication meetings where the operations and duty managers work work with the operational pla nning department. It is through interaction and communication that allows Richard to have a better overview of what is shortly happening so long-term plan can be thought off.Another example, the airport is trying to encourage other airlines to fill in their off-peak times to fully utilize their resources. This is also a day-to-day observation 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 before it could happen or becomes a big issue. Through operational planning the airport is able to make a major contribution to the strike on the local economy by encouraging inward investment and exports.