A UK Department for Transport (DfT) sturdy is calling for enhanced airport links for passengers as well as a better airport experience.
The major report - Improving the Air Passenger Experience ” is long on stating the current situation but short on ways to tackle the problems - but does highlight the old chestnuts that have so bedevilled passenger using Heathrow in particular.
Each stage of a typical passenger”s journey is analysed, from leaving home to airport arrival, identifying pinch points that slow the system down, while identifying unquantifiable elements such as fog and wind.
”We need to consider the whole journey time ” it is not simply the flight that matters,” said Secretary of State for Transport, Ruth Kelly.
”If you travel from London to Frankfurt for instance, you will spend around 90min in the air, yet the whole journey from one city-centre to another, takes around five hours.”
The report also highlights various rail initiatives designed to alleviate access problems and congestion such as Crossrail and Heathrow Airtrack, while noting that the imminent arrival of Terminal 5 next year, will provide significantly improved underground capacity to London.
Kelly added that she is writing to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to ask its views on how to improve check-in times and other, unspecified, aspects of the airport experience.
A DfT spokesman also told ABTN that the report was the first time that a study had isolated the step-by-step process of an airport experience. ”It”s only the first step but we are clear that we must iron out as many of these pinchpoints as possible,” he said.
”Writing to the CAA is not terribly dramatic, but it is a first stage. This will be a methodology that we could develop to other airports and other modes of transport.”
Further information on the study can be found at: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/aviation/airports/improveairpassenger.pdf