Manchester Airport optimizes passenger related processes and capacity with Bluetooth

Manchester Airport improves efficiency and planning capabilities by replacing manual sample measurement of passenger queue and dwell time with an automated tracking solution. With the intelligent Queue & Dwell Time Monitoring solution from BLIP Systems, Manchester Airport now has access to accurate and valid real time as well as historic data about passenger time spent from check-in to departure 24-7-365.

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Documentation of more efficient passenger handling

A key objective of airport management is to make the passenger experience as positive as possible, at all times. Smooth and effective flows and processes are, therefore, of paramount importance to the airport’s operations and its competitive position. Both are crucial to the airport and its airline partners – which is why the efficiency of airport operations is measured against a service level agreement (SLA) between the airlines and the airport authority. This is done to ensure that passengers get through a number of checkpoints within a certain time span. Currently, Manchester Airport is checking passenger dwell time relating to the security scanning process in all three terminals and is working on a trial for the immigration line.

Measurement and documentation

As part of its partnership approach to improving the passenger experience, Manchester Airport reports the time spent by passengers from check-in to completion of the security scan to the airlines. These reports include performance against agreed target times. Over the last two years, Manchester Airport has invested over £50 million in redeveloping its three terminals following extensive passenger research. The research confirmed that, prior to security, departing passengers experience a degree of stress because they want to check-in and proceed through security as quickly as possible. Once in the departure lounge, passengers begin to relax. 

As a result, the security search areas were expanded and relocated next to check-in, creating a larger airside space which has been extensively refurbished to include new retail space, catering, seating and gate areas – all based on passenger feedback. Thus the airport depends on the ability to track and measure passenger queue and dwell time in different areas of the airport in order to shorten the time that passengers spend to get airside.

"The Queue & Dwell time solution has given us a dynamic and valid tool to document our performance against the SLA and also to ensure that the right numbers of staff are in the right place at the right time for our passengers. The real time data makes us able to plan and react rapidly to ongoing changes in queue developments and short term peaks”, explains Rick Mernock”, Head of Performance, Manchester Airport" and continues: 

“Making the passenger journey easy is at the heart of our business – and managing and reducing queue lengths is a critical part of our ability to achieve this. As aviation revenues decrease, the delivery of improved business opportunities for the airside retailers is also important to our overall business performance”, says Rick Mernock, Head of Performance, Manchester Airport. 

From approximate to accurate intelligent data

Through automatic collection of Bluetooth IDs collected from passenger mobile phones and PDAs, Manchester Airport gets a significant amount of raw data on which the required analysis, modeling and reports can be based. The BLIP Systems solution has enabled Manchester Airport to replace legacy manual measurement systems with a modern and reliable automatic method of achieving visibility of passenger queuing and dwell time.

Stored data about passenger movements gives Manchester Airport a powerful tool for statistical modeling and forecasting in order to predict trends and future needs and the crucial ability to plan more strategically in the long term.