Their Story:
Bristol Airport has one terminal which sees 4.6 million passengers fly to over 90 destinations each year. Located 13km south of Bristol city centre in Somerset, south-west England, the airport allows flights for the public transport of passengers and for flying instruction.
When turning to Gunnebo, Bristol Airport wanted an innovative, efficient solution for controlling the flow of passengers into security control.
Their Goal:
To decrease the processing times to get passengers into the airside lounges, whilst preventing passenger stress and allowing passengers more time in duty free. Rationale – airports are fined if the processing is too long and duty free is a big additional revenue stream for airports.
It was also important to be able to measure passenger queuing times and to record their patterns of movement in order to establish efficient logistics. The information is also necessary to optimise the location of different service facilities and exits at the airport.
Gunnebo Solution:
Gunnebo UK and ICTS Europe, both leading providers of security systems to the aviation industry, joined forces to provide an innovative and effective pre-security solution to speed up the processing time to get passengers airside at Bristol Airport. Gunnebo provided nine lanes of high-security and high-capacity Speed Gates (SpeedStile FP) which were integrated with ICTS’s Queue Management System, “SmartQ”.
Their Business Benefits:
After check-in, passengers at Bristol Airport scan their boarding cards in the queue management system SmartQ which can read different types of card (magnetic strip, bar code, etc.) SmartQ logs the time of arrival, validates each passenger’s boarding pass and routes them to a certain lane. The database matches the time and location of each passenger to estimate and display accurate queuing times through the terminal. Queue times are combined to provide a complete picture of terminal operations, delivering detailed, real-time statistics on every journey and queue in the airport.
Quote from customer:
“The system has revolutionised the way we look at and manage our passengers in the terminals. We can now monitor the current ‘live’ status of our entrance gates and see how quickly the passengers are passing through them. If problems arise we can quickly take action. We can also deploy our personnel at times and in places where they are needed most,” commented Chris Ware, Head of Security at Bristol Airport.