How do you catch a plane?
How do you catch a plane? More interestingly: what are the stages of your door-to-door journey when an airline flight is involved? They’re most likely not all the same as anyone else’s.
There are a myriad ways of getting from your starting point (home, office, hotel) to the airport – from “door” to “kerb”. It could be by private car – whether “kiss-and-fly” (driven by family or friend), a ride-share with another passenger/co-worker, a taxi/minicab or their modern app-based equivalents, or we can just drive ourselves and park in the long-term or short-term car park (or maybe an off-site car park which then took you to your terminal by shuttle bus). It could be by bicycle or motorbike. It could be by bus, coach, tram, train, metro, or a combination of these – but how did you get to the stop/station for first one; walking, taxi, driving, “kiss-and-ride”, cycling – and where did the last one drop you off: the terminal, the airport transport hub? You may have driven, and then had to return, a hire car (if this is a return leg or your trip) and then took the hire company’s shuttle. If you left from an airport hotel, you most probably took their shuttle.
Getting through the airport (from “kerb” to “gate”) also involves many options. Did you check in online or do you have to do it at the terminal? Do you have bags to check in? Do you have to go through passport control? How long is the queue at the security check? How much buffer time did you leave, that you can now spend browsing around the shops? How many miles do you have to walk to get to your gate? Is your flight delayed?
Your answers to these questions (and their equivalents for the “gate” to “kerb” and “kerb” to “door” legs once your flight has landed), as well as the process for the actual flight(s) from gate-to-gate (including any transfers), have a bearing on how long your total journey will take. To be able to determine where there is room for reduction in this journey-time, and where research must be directed to initiate this reduction, in order to meet the ACARE goal of 4 hours door-to-door for intra-EU journeys, the DATASET 2050 team have analysed the component times of the current air journey in detail. This work is presented in the project’s deliverable 4.1 – Current Supply Profile.
Data for such analysis is hard to come by. Much of it is proprietary and, if it’s available at all, is sold at a high price – too high for this project. That which is available generally concerns all passengers, rather than just those on intra-EU travel; are people really likely to ride on one of the scheduled overnight coaches from Edinburgh to Heathrow to take a short-haul flight?
Making use of tools such as those provided by Google Maps, DATASET2050 researchers have been able to see the time taken to access airports by car, bicycle and public transport for a selection of airports.
Berlin Tegel access-egress times by (L-R) bicycle, public transport, and car . (NB: scales are different, see them full size below)
These results and the many others included in D4.1 will help colleagues working on the next steps in the DATASET2050 project determine which parts of the different segments of your door-to-door journey can be speeded up, and where research and development is needed to further reduce our journey times.
