BENCHMARKING
There is no one-size-fits-all measure of security efficiency and performance, with airport design and staffing arrangements varying around the world. But the guide below gives an indication of the most reliable indicators of operational maturity – or early warning signs. How do you measure up?
OPERATIONAL SETUP
Screening checkpoints
Warning sign: Multiple, widely dispersed gate-based checkpoints. Mostly fixed posts rather than demand-variable facilities.
Mature indicator: Centralised screening areas with lane operations tailored to variable passenger demand throughout the day.
Lane performance
Warning sign: Lane throughput is unmeasured and untested, and not visible in real-time to the operation. No baseline for what good looks like. Clear bottlenecks in throughput.
Mature indicator: Subject to continuous testing, experimentation, and improvement. Throughput exceeding 45 pax per ASO hour (higher without body scanning).
Queueing and compliance
Warning sign: Unpredictable spikes in passenger queuing metrics, with daily queues over 10 minutes. Contraventions of compliance regulations.
Mature indicator: Passenger queuing under 5 minutes, with known/predictable exceptions. Fully regulation-compliant.
DEMAND AND RESOURCE ALIGNMENT
Lane utilisation
Warning sign: Lanes tend to operate at below 70% of maximum capacity on average, with limited measurement or benchmarking.
Mature indicator: Lanes operate at above 80% of maximum capacity on average, balancing efficiency and resilience to surges.
Break design
Warning sign: Breaks covered by a dedicated relief team providing flat cover across the whole day — including during peaks.
Mature indicator: Breaks designed to coincide with lulls in demand, combined with staggered shift starts and smart break-allowance rules.
Shifts and rosters
Warning sign: Outdated legacy rosters that no longer reflect demand patterns, with concerns from both staff and the business.
Mature indicator: Rosters and contracts that deliberately balance operational needs, staff quality of life, and planning feasibility.
Resourcing flexibility
Warning sign: A fixed, flat supply of shifts, leaving either overtime or permanent overstaffing to adapt to demand variation.
Mature indicator: Working arrangements — contracts, rosters, shift structures — that allow resourcing to flex up or down in line with demand.
PLANNING & DECISION-MAKING
Cost-per-passenger visibility
Warning sign: Cost per passenger is not systematically measured or modelled. Key cost drivers are unknown or untested. Metrics vary between FTE, cost, hours and passengers.
Mature indicator: An end-to-end cost model with well-understood variables. Understood in hours-based and cost-based metrics.
Planning transparency
Warning sign: Padding factors buried in formulas, disguising cost-vs-resilience trade-offs. Decisions lack clear evidence.
Mature indicator: Trade-off factors fully transparent and visualised, highlighting moments where business decisions are needed.
Daily and weekly planning
Warning sign: Low-value, poorly-informed planning sessions, or reliance on an individual role with little decision sharing.
Mature indicator: Slick, well-informed sessions to surface and quickly resolve key decision points, and review previous decisions.
Strategic planning
Warning sign: Forward planning based on thin-slice sampling or simple carrying-forward of existing arrangements, without a clear view of all the interconnected moving parts. Evaluating the future is time-consuming and divisive.
Mature indicator: 12-month forecasts showing passenger presentation at 15-minute granularity, feeding a rounded view of resilience over a full season/year to inform strategic approach. Ability to test different scenarios with confidence.
Technological maturity
Warning sign: High-effort, low-transparency systems with no real-time or strategic modelling capability. Fragmented data.
Mature indicator: Aligned, accessible systems with decision-support for real-time deployment through to long-term strategic modelling.
PEOPLE & GOVERNANCE
Workforce engagement
Warning sign: Bad-faith friction around proposed roster or workforce changes. No evidence base behind management proposals.
Mature indicator: Positive engagement between management and staff reps, underpinned by well-supported, transparent proposals.
Supplier relationship
Warning sign: Antagonistic commercial priorities between airport and service provider. Friction-driven relationship.
Mature indicator: Cooperative, partnership-driven relationship with win-win commercial incentives governing efficiency and resilience.
Business alignment
Warning sign: Mistrust and cross-wires between executive, operations and rostering/planning functions.
Mature indicator: Positive internal dialogue based on confidence in the evidence base for decisions. Alignment on concepts and language.
