Aviation Solutions - by Schiphol Group

Your best people, answering the easiest questions. Ask a terminal host how many times they pointed someone to a gate today. Most lost count before noon. Individually, these questions do not matter. Together, they are why experienced staff spend their shift on wayfinding instead of on the passengers who really need a person: the missed connection, the lost travel companion, the disruption nobody explained. The cost is not the question. It is what your best people are not doing while they answer it again.

Uncertainty does not show up on a dashboard. Three people, one screen, three different ideas of where to go next. This is what uncertainty looks like in a terminal. Not a complaint and not a delay, nothing that shows up on a dashboard. Just a group that stops, points, discusses and loses minutes they may need later. Airports measure queue times, passenger volumes and on-time performance. The moment a passenger is not sure what to do next goes unmeasured, while it shapes how the whole journey feels. Where in your terminal do passengers stop to check if they are on the right track?

Passengers want certainty, not more information. Am I in the right place? Do I still have time? What should I do next? Most passengers are not looking for more information. The screens are full of it. They are looking for certainty, and a list of flights does not give them that. Confidence is not a soft metric. It is the difference between a journey that flows and one that feels like hard work.

The flight is not missed yet. The board says E17. It does not say that E17 is a 15 minute walk away, or that boarding closes in 20. A missed connection rarely starts with a delay. It starts with a passenger standing in front of a screen, doing the maths on their own and getting it slightly wrong. None of these passengers have missed their flight yet. Most do not know they are at risk. Often, nobody else knows either. At what point in the transfer does your airport know a passenger is running out of time?

The most expensive question in your terminal. One of the most expensive questions in an airport is "Where is my gate?". Not because it is hard to answer, but because it takes someone in uniform to answer it. Every easy question takes an experienced colleague away from the passenger who just missed a connection, lost a boarding pass or is stuck in a disruption with no idea what to do next. Your staff cannot be everywhere in the terminal. The questions can. If half of the easy questions answered themselves tomorrow, where would your team spend that time?

Why the information desk is always busy. A busy information desk says less about the desk than about everything before it. Every passenger in that queue passed several screens and signs on the way. They did not lack information. They lacked the confidence that they had read it right. Most airports already give passengers plenty to read. Far fewer help them feel sure at the moment the question comes up.