(COVID-19) airport response

The COVID-19 pandemic had the highest impact on aviation since World War II. Airlines and airports struggled together with passengers, cargo and even legal bodies and governments. But where to start from to understand the dynamics of the impact of our subject at TxP_R: air terminals? Starting in the middle of March, when the pandemic had arrived in Italy but Europe was still on business as usual. We followed the shutdown and measures set-up at the airports mainly induced by public health authorities. The reaction at air terminals was as inhomogeneous as were the national health instructions. To prepare the path for a slow-reopening and possible future situations we started  gathering information on the specific measures at European capital city hubs, the European legal guidance and supportive actions and documents of the stakeholders involved at a European and international level in aviation.

The airline activities where reduced heavily at that time in Asia, most European member states and Switzerland. Israel followed. Small airports started to be closed for lack of traffic larger ones reduced the served terminals mostly using a single terminal. Using the most recently equipped terminal buildings and connected car parks helped with reducing the contact points between passengers and personnel. The WHO induced hygiene and health protocols are implemented well in terms of cleaning and disinfection methods. Mask order was impossible because of missing material in the beginning but became almost natural further on. Italy was the first European country with heavy deceases and thus we have been amongst the first European transport research institutes to react. Whereas some countries started to implement measures only at the End of 2020.

To hold track of what was going on for a further analysis and best practice development, at TXP we searched the websites of air terminals for measures taken first on a daily, later on on a weekly and/or monthly basis from March 19th to November 2020.

Focussing on European terminals from 5 Million passengers (Class 3) to major Hubs, including even smaller terminals where no larger national terminals exist. International Hubs have been documented only as comparative samples, not systematically.

We first set up a database of copies of the pages of the airport websites including any COVID-19 related information. Copies have been repeated on a daily basis until May 2020, passing to weekly shots in autumn. With upcoming additional web-based information, we enlarged the dataset with this additional texts and images.

The COVID-19 relevant information was extracted for each air terminal. After this common patterns have been gathered to identify the set-up of best practices in air terminal operations, passenger information and behaviour instructions, integration of health and security measures and finally of new technology development and introduction. If the first months where characterised by individual reaction patterns for almost each airport, the national schemes became more and more visible. It was well noticeable how some of the larger European hubs developed strategies, which have been adopted by others and then translated to Eurocontrol and IATA measures, to be implemented by most hubs.

The research results supported input to Italian and European directives for airport pandemic reaction plans.

Keywords

Air Terminal Operations, Pandemic, COVID-19, Policy Impact, Best Practices