Article location:http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/123/hustle-and-flow.html
February 15, 2008
Tags: Innovation, Technology, Design, Work/Life
Hustle & Flow
By Dave Demerjian
It's Wednesday morning at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and
the United Airlines check-in area is a mob scene. Passengers queue up
in a line that runs the length of the counter and doubles back.
Customers waiting for agents block the self-serve kiosks. Finished
passengers must push through the crowd again. Average check-in time:
25 to 30 minutes.
Down the hall at Alaska Airlines, employees roam a spacious hall,
directing customers toward kiosks. Lines aren't more than three deep,
and travelers are on their way to security in eight minutes or less.
One woman pauses, looking confused, and another turns and says, "It's
this new check-in thing. Don't worry, it's really fast."
Moving customers from frustration to relief--in a fraction of the
time--has been at the root of Alaska Airlines' Airport of the Future
project. The carrier has spent more than a decade designing a better
way to get customers through airport check-in, debuting the first
iteration in its Anchorage terminal in 2004. Last October, the $3.3
billion carrier began rolling out its redesign in Seattle, where
Alaska and its sister airline, Horizon, have almost 50% market share.
The project, to be completed in May, has already reduced wait times
and increased agent productivity. "People come to the airport
expecting to stand in line," says Ed White, Alaska's VP of corporate
real estate, who ran the project. "It's an indictment of our
industry."
Alaska's embrace of the future came out of necessity. By the
mid-1990s, it was running out of space to handle its Seattle
passengers. "If you came here on a busy day, it was jammed," White
says. A new terminal, though, would have cost around $500 million.
Alaska tried self-serve kiosks, but technology alone wasn't the
answer. Kiosks were pushed against the ticket counter, which only
further stagnated the flow of passengers.
White assembled a team of employees from across the company to design
a better system. It visited theme parks, hospitals, and retailers to
see what it could learn. It found less confusion and shorter waits at
places where employees were available to direct customers. "Disneyland
is great at this," says Jeff Anderson, a member of White's skunk
works. "They have their people in all the right places."
The team began brainstorming lobby ideas. At a Seattle warehouse, it
built mock-ups, using cardboard boxes for podiums, kiosks, and belts.
It tested a curved design, one resembling a fishbone, and one with
counters placed at 90-degree angles to each other. It built a small
prototype in Anchorage to test systems with real passengers and Alaska
employees. The resulting minor changes, such as moving the button that
sends a bag down the conveyor belt, "increased agents' efficiency and
prevented them from straining themselves," says Gordon Edberg, a
principal at ECH Architecture who helped implement the adjustments.
The Seattle design begins with a deep lobby where 50 kiosks are pushed
to the front and concentrated in banks. "You need to cluster kiosks in
the 'decision zones' where passengers decide what to do within 15
seconds," says airline technology expert Kevin Peterson. Alaska placed
"lobby coordinators" out front, à la Disneyland, to help educate
travelers. The 56 bag-drop stations are further back and arranged so
that passengers can see security.
The results? During my two hours of observation in Seattle, an Alaska
agent processed 46 passengers, while her counterpart at United managed
just 22. United's agents lose precious time hauling bags and walking
the length of the ticket counter to reach customers. Alaska agents
stand at a station with belts on each side, assisting one passenger
while a second traveler places luggage on the free belt. With just a
slight turn, the agent can assist the next customer. "We considered
having three belts," White says. "But then the agent has to take a
step. That's wasted time."
The new design will create significant cost savings. Seventy-three
percent of Alaska's Anchorage passengers now check in using kiosks or
the Web, compared with just 50% across the airline industry. Forrester
Research estimates that it costs airlines $3.02 to process a passenger
using an agent but only between 14 and 32 cents for self-service.
Alaska, then, is likely to save almost $8 million a year on the
Seattle terminal if it converts customers the way it has in Anchorage.
And the makeover cost just $28 million. "This design will take us to
2017, at least," White says.
The Seattle makeover cost $28 million, a far cry from a new $500
million terminal.
Alaska plans to roll out its Airport of the Future design in Portland,
Oregon; San Francisco; and Oakland, California. And the new system is
already being eyed by competitors: Elements can be seen in Delta
Airlines' renovated Atlanta check-in area. "Passengers see where
they're going," says John Murphy of Corgan Associates, an architect
who worked on the Atlanta terminal. "It's intuitive." At London
Heathrow's Terminal 5, scheduled to open this month, British Airways
is installing an even larger version of an Alaska-style system, with
96 kiosks and 96 bag-drop stations. White says he doesn't mind the
copycats. "Our patents were about recognizing our employees more than
protecting intellectual property," he says. "We're happy to see others
embracing what we developed."
--
Please read our new blog at:
http://blog.prathambooks.org/
