Reguladores fijos

Handling agents perform various ground handling services on behalf of airlines at airport sites. For example, check-in, baggage transfer and loading, maintenance, refuelling, load-control and catering are typically carried out by handling agents. Very few airlines employ their own staff

121 for the checking-in of passengers; an exception is typically the ‘home’ base of operations for airlines (e.g. British Airways at London Heathrow) where an airline employs ground handling staff directly. Accordingly there are several organizations that specialise in the ground handling aspects of preparing commercial flights, ServisAir, Menzies and Swissport are the three largest examples of handling agents and have operations worldwide. Usually the first contact a passenger has with the airline they are flying with is with the aircraft cabin crew. This was reinforced anecdotally at various points during the research; when you travel by plane, the first contact you usually have with the airline is when you step onto the plane. It is common that one or a range of handling agents, airport staff and security staff provide the customer interface with air passengers at airports.

Handling agents are implicated in the introduction of technologies such as CUSS, as it is effectively the automation of parts of their operations (e.g. check-in, Figure 5.3). As providers of check-in services to airlines, handling agents have been involved in either the purchase of CUSS kiosks or the ‘hosting’ of kiosks at airport sites. At NEMA, the airport both owns and hosts the CUSS kiosks, however handling agents continue to provide conventional check-in and also provide the bag-drop desks that accompany kiosk and online passenger check-in. A combination of scheduled, charter and low-fare airlines operate from NEMA, however the low-fare airlines are not involved in the use of CUSS kiosks.

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Passengers

The CUSS Kiosk project, as well as providing a source of cost savings for airlines, is designed to reduce check-in times for passengers. Passengers are expected to check themselves in using the touch screen interface on the kiosk, reducing the need for paid check-in staff under traditional arrangements. IATA has conducted research into the best spatial arrangements for positioning and identifying the kiosks to passengers. They recommend placing the kiosks between the entrance to a passenger terminal building and conventional check-in desks and for the kiosks to be brightly decorated in a brand-neutral colour. To this effect, the kiosks at all of MAG sites are luminous green and at NEMA occupy the space between the terminal entrance and the rows of check- in desks towards the rear of the building.

Nottingham East Midlands Airport

This section provides a brief history of Nottingham East Midlands Airport. It provides a background to the setting and location of the Common User Self Service Check-In (CUSS) technology being implemented at the airport. The development of the organization is fundamental to the way technology is conceived, designed, tendered for, implemented and its

123 eventual use (Grimshaw, Cooke et al., 2002). The evolution of an organization provides significant cues towards understanding and validating actions and assertions observed in the individual case studies.

Nottingham East Midlands Airport (NEMA) began commercial operation on the site of a former Royal Air Force base in 1965. In its first year 118,305 passengers flew from the airport (NEMA, 2005). The 1970’s saw the development of a freight handling centre and a runway extension increasing the capacity of the airport. Located close to the, then, recently extended M1 motorway freight carriers in the seventies began to use the airport more intensively. The growth in freight was significant; the amount of freight handled in 1970 was 1,586 tonnes by the end of the decade 6,283 tonnes (1979) was handled by the airport (Walker, 2005).

By 1985 one million passengers were using the airport each year and in response to the growth in passenger air traffic a £3.8m (at 1986 prices) terminal extension was opened in December 1986. At this time the first steps toward privatisation were made. The airport was owned and operated by four local authorities; Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottingham City Council would become a Public Airport Company (PAC). This allowed the airport autonomy as an organization in its own right, compared with the series of committees who steered the airport. While the four local authorities still owned the

124 airport, it would be run more like a company than public sector infrastructure. However, this change in structure was opposed by the airport committee who saw this move as taking away the rewards from the local authorities who funded the airport’s development and at the same time bore its financial risk for many years (Walker, 2005). The Airports Act (1986) enforced the change in structure; on the 1st of April 1987 the airport became a PAC.

The early nineties saw passenger terminal capacity reached and proposals for further extending the facilities were considered. Amidst a recession and increased pressure for local authorities to reduce spending the decision was made in 1993 by the four local authority shareholders to sell the airport making East Midlands Airport the first regional airport in the UK to enter the private sector (Walker, 2005). The airport was purchased by the National Express Group in August 1993 for the price of £24.3m and saw investment of £77m over the course of their eight year ownership (NEMA, 2006). The investment program was designed to increase the capacity of both passenger and freight movements. The runway was extended to 2,893 metres and a new control tower constructed. During 1994 the throughput of freight at the airport grew by 75% and saw the arrival of United Parcel Services locating their UK hub on site and the expansion of DHL into its own dedicated terminal. East Midlands Airport entered the top 100 world cargo airports and is currently the UK’s top pure-freight airport (dedicated cargo aircraft) with

125 three of the four largest cargo handlers in the world located at the airport; DHL, TNT and United Parcel Service (NEMA, 2005; Walker, 2005; Civil Aviation Authority, 2006; NEMA, 2006).

The year 2000 saw Nottingham East Midlands Airport put up for sale by the National Express Group having taken the strategic decision to focus on their land-based activities. The airport was sold to Manchester Airport Group in March 2001 for £241m (Walker, 2005; NEMA, 2006). This placed NEMA as part of the second largest airport group in the UK (after BAA) alongside sister airports Manchester, Humberside and Bournemouth. The beginning of this period saw continued growth with passenger movements totalling 2.38m people during 2001 (Civil Aviation Authority, 2001). In the next five years a new business model for airline operations would see the airport need to adjust to both a dramatic rise in passenger numbers and the kinds of passenger using Nottingham East Midlands Airport. The advent of low-fare airlines has placed new demands on UK airports, both in terms of capacity for handling passengers and the ways in which airports provide services to their customers; passengers and airlines. This ‘new’ approach to airline operation generated new demand for airports, especially outside of the congested major airports in the South East of England. Regional airports became the choice of low-fare operators; NEMA with its location and capacity was attractive to low-fare operators. GO (now easyJet) and bmiBaby both established bases at NEMA and Ryanair commenced flights

126 in 2004. Historically, NEMA had established a customer base of both business passengers and seasonal charter/package passengers. With this passenger profile the airport had continued to grow over forty years. The advent of low-fare airlines operating from the airport helped passenger numbers to reach 4.3m in 2004 (Civil Aviation Authority, 2004). To put this in perspective, this represents growth of 97% on 1999 passenger numbers (Civil Aviation Authority, 2004), the low-fare airline model has stimulated demand in the airline sector creating new and significant challenges for airport managers.

In the face of limited expansion opportunities in the current climate of regulation indicated in the Government White Paper (Department for Transport, 2003) and trade association IATA’s initiative to join up the operations of airports, airport organizations are re-appraising how to meet rising passenger demand for air travel. One of the responses by airport organizations is to implement technologies to improve the handling capacity of their terminals; the common-use self service check- in kiosk (CUSS) is one of Manchester Airport Group’s responses to increasing passenger numbers, saving costs and delaying the physical expansion of terminal buildings. Across the Manchester Airport Group 90 CUSS Kiosks have been implemented; 78 at Manchester (Ringway International), 10 at Nottingham East Midlands Airport and 2 at Humberside. At the Manchester Site the 78 kiosks will be ‘hosted’ by handling agents on behalf of airlines, at NEMA the kiosks will be hosted

127 by their own customer services staff and at Humberside the kiosks will receive no dedicated hosts. For this reason NEMA represented a good example of technological change within an organization. The case study in Chapter 5 looks at the process of sociotechnical change in Nottingham East Midlands Airport following the introduction of CUSS kiosks.