FLUG REVUE October 2006: Low-cost terminals are essential

October 2006

CHEAP TERMINALS FOR LOW-COST AIRLINES

Geoff Jones/ SST

Low-fare airlines often attract unfavourable publicity; yet they can only be as good as the airports that they use. High charges for passenger walkways or terminals are luxuries that the no-frills airlines can ill afford. It goes without saying, for example, that Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary does not fly his low-cost jets to the big European hubs of London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt-Rhine-Main, Milan Malpensa or Amsterdam Schiphol, as the charges for building usage and ground handling at those airports are permanently high. Continuing with the example of Ryanair: when airports like Cardiff, the regional airport of Newquay in Cornwall or Milan Bergamo raised their charges, the price-sensitive “Mr Ryanair” immediately threatened to cease all flights to those destinations.

One of Europe's most expensive airports, Amsterdam Schiphol, is now trying to adjust to the requirements of the no-frills airlines, which are different from those of the classic airlines. Schiphol's new “Pier H”, which was opened in November 2005, is a no-frills terminal with seven gates which was built in nine months for Euro 30 million. Today 64 flights are handled there every day. The building, which was designed solely to handle direct flights and has only modest interior fittings, indirectly benefits the other “classic” terminal areas, in which KLM now has more room to handle its own increasing traffic.

Amsterdam's Pier H has rapidly evolved into a new base for easyJet, Thomsonfly, bmi Baby and Jet2, which had not previously flown to Schiphol. Other European low-cost airlines such as Sky Europe, Pegasus, Nordic Leisure and Futuradirect followed suit.

The airport administration of Schiphol deliberately channels its extra low-fare business into the less busy hours outside the morning, late afternoon and evening traffic peaks of the rest of the airport. During those hours, things are relatively quiet in “H”. But outside the peak hours, Terminal H comes to life. An A320 that is handled here costs 25 percent less in terms of ground handling charges than Schiphol's traditional gates. easyJet, which now operates twenty flights a day from Amsterdam, makes a saving of Euro 1 million per year as a result.

On the other hand, customers do suffer from a minor inconvenience: often the no-frills airlines land on the new, fifth runway 01/19 right at the south-west of the airport, from where taxiing to Terminal H entails a circuitous route around the remaining terminal areas and can take up to 20 minutes. One would have thought that these higher taxiing costs would simply cancel out the savings made in ground handling.

Schiphol is Europe's fourth biggest airport and is renowned for its shopping malls. On the other hand Terminal H is devoid of shops, seating areas, cafés and toilets. Passengers arrive here only half an hour prior to departure. Before that they congregate in the adjoining shopping malls, watching the monitors there, which call them to the gate only shortly before takeoff time. At this point there is a veritable race to the security gate for hand luggage and a long distance to walk without the assistance of travelators or people mover systems. Schiphol cut the construction costs of Terminal H by going for a purely functional design: steel plates on the side walls and ceiling, a glass facade facing the airport, linoleum flooring and fluorescent lighting. Heating and ventilation are minimal. In the winter it is cold and in the summer hot and stuffy. Again, the ground-level waiting areas for passengers are spartan, but they fulfil their purpose.

All the passengers have to walk across the ramp to their aircraft, come rain or sunshine, and embark by climbing up the steps. A frequent-flier businessman compares Pier H with a warehouse: “I always wait until the last minute to go to the plane. I expect more and more airports to go this way. But as long as one is saving money as a result, I don't have a problem with it.” In Amsterdam, passengers of the low-fare airlines are given a leaflet on how to use Pier H and also informed of the 10-minute walk to the nearest toilets.

In many respects the building reminds one of the terminal extension which opened at Cologne in 2004 at a cost of Euro 25 million. It helped Cologne to dramatically boost its passenger throughput from 5.5 million in 2002 to 9.5 million in 2005. The new ground handling capacity benefits Germanwings particularly. As at Amsterdam, the passengers climb up steps at the front and rear of the aircraft, enabling the no-frills airlines to achieve their target 30 minute turnaround time.

Anyone who today flies as a passenger from England to Amsterdam and back again for only Euro 58, including taxes, is not going to complain about the spartan facilities. The new Terminal 5 to be built by the British Airport Authority (BAA) in London Heathrow may be architecturally more elegant, like the expensive new terminals in San Francisco and Toronto Pearson International. But when an airport operator such as San Francisco is forced to double its passenger charges from Euro 8 to Euro 16 despite pressure to the contrary, one cannot help asking as a passenger whether Amsterdam Schiphol and Cologne are not backing the right horse while the established industry giants are doing the wrong thing.

From page 74 of FLUG REVUE 10/2006

Last updated 15 September 2006

FLUG REVUE, Ubierstr. 83, 53173 Bonn, Germany