Future Borders: ACI chief says collaboration is key to meeting growth demands

The organisation’s director general, Angela Gittens, (pictured above) was representing airports which handle 95 per cent of the world’s passenger traffic, when she spoke at today’s Future Borders conference.

ACI, along with ICAO and IATA has supported the proliferation of ABC systems in the US, she said.

This new technology allows travelers to complete the required travel documentation at kiosks, increasing the efficiency of passenger processing and freeing passport control/immigration officers to focus on their security tasks. The increased throughput from this technology will allow passengers to move more quickly through the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) process, thereby improving travel facilitation.

Gittens said that  ACI has collaborated with CBP to launch a first-of-its-kind application to expedite travelers’ entry processes into the US. The app allows eligible travelers to submit their passport information and customs declaration form via a smartphone or tablet prior to CBP inspection.

ACI is a founding member of the Global Travel Association Coalition (GTAC) and the current concentration is on gaining reductions in the visa process, going country by country to help them understand the impact of their visa requirements on their tourism and travel market, she said. 

Gittens said: “There is a lot to be done – we have big job ahead of us. It will take substantial collaboration within the industry, with government and with other interested parties to accommodate the growing demand for air travel safely and securely, to meet our environmental commitments and to sustain our businesses.”

Gittens said a clear focus on customer service is something that ACI sees as equally important for the future growth of the industry.

“Airports today have become very accomplished in both the science and art of managing service quality. We see leading practice in every region. Airport service quality benchmarking has come a long way in the past ten years and the bar has been raised across the industry.”

Talking about collaboration with other stakeholders she said: “We can put more efficiency and reliability into the system by sharing information among the players. This is especially critical during periods of irregular operations—either of a particular aircraft, airline or the airport as a whole. Passengers miss their connections while security controls, customs and immigration, retail and food shops get out of synch with passenger flows. Airports become overly congested in the terminals and on their access roads and confusion reigns.”

About the state of the industry from an airport perspective, she said year-over-year passenger traffic increases range from 3.2 per cent in North America to an impressive 10.3 per cent in the Middle East. In fact, double-digit growth rates continue to persist for airports across the region. 

Abu Dhabi and Doha grew by 20.2 per cent and 13.2 per cent respectively. Dubai International has moved up to the sixth busiest airport in the world in 2014, the year when it also overtook London Heathrow as the world’s top airport for international passengers. The compounded average annual growth rate in passenger traffic for the period 2004 to 2014 was  4.2 per cent. The world’s airports last year handled 6.6 billion passengers.

She disclosed the airport sector posted net profit margins in the realm of 16 per cent in 2013, 67 per cent of airports globally operate at a net loss. About 80 per cent of airports with fewer than a million passengers lost money. Industry profitability is primarily driven by the 20 per cent of airports that carry the bulk of passenger and cargo traffic.

Airports worldwide had an average return on investment of 6% with the highest return generated by airports with passenger volume between five and 15 million. Airports with fewer than one million passengers have a negative return on invested capital of less than 3%.