A LEVEL OF SERVICE FRAMEWORK FOR AIRPORT PASSENGER TERMINAL BUILDINGS

Abstract

The aviation industry has experienced significant expansion over the last two decades. The growing competition among the airlines, introduction of low-cost economy flights, budget terminals, and decreased airfares have contributed to the increase in passenger demand towards this sector. This has escalated the passenger footfall at the landside terminals, resulting in crowding and congestion, building an imbalance between the available airport infrastructure and passenger demand. Due to this scenario, passengers experienced longer queueing times, difficulty navigating crowded areas, increased stress levels, and decreased comfort and satisfaction, resulting in poor travel experiences. In this context, evaluating service quality (SQ) or level of service (LOS) is crucial in complex passenger terminals like airports. Since airports predominantly cater to passengers, the Service Quality (SQ) and benchmarking protocols applied to airports should be primarily based on the perceptions of these end users. Airports adhere to global standards set by the Airport Council International (ACI) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) for evaluating passenger service quality. Lately, these standards have been criticized by researchers, as they lack passenger perceptions. Moreover, existing frameworks tend to focus only on specific facilities or certain phases of passenger travel. This study addresses this gap by comprehensively evaluating airport service quality (ASQ) using quantitative onsite measurements of airport terminal buildings and subjective passenger opinions. This research begins with a detailed literature review classifying the existing literature on LOS into two broad study levels. The literature additionally examined the diverse variables encompassed within the research and the various methodologies used, deriving 58 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). From this, the study shortlisted 30 KPIs using expert opinions for evaluating airport LOS and further classified these as major and minor KPIs for the departure and arrival terminals. Passenger surveys using structured questionnaires captured the passenger demography, travel characteristics and the significance of major and minor KPIs from the end user perspective.