Innovation and airport ground access

With the recent change of government in Kenya came the removal of fuel subsidy. Aviation in Africa will have to begin to plan not only for a future of renewable energy but also for disruptions that will come with innovations in ground access.

Global fossil fuel consumption subsidies in 2021 have been estimated at $440 billion (Wikipedia) and, consistently, are in the hundreds of billions of dollars and do vary each year depending on the price of oil.

A recommendation by economists to address the subsidy burden has been direct payment to poor people or households. In the G-20 meeting of September 2009 there was a commitment to “rationalise” and phase out, over the medium term, inefficient fossil fuel subsidies which encourage wasteful consumption.

Airport ground access is one of the key determinants towards the choice of airports by those who travel by air. As insecurity has become a serious concern in Africa, air travel becomes a preferred choice of the rich and middle income class. To address the needs of passengers, airports must strive towards ensuring that transit systems to airports are resilient and reliable since the cost of missing a flight is high.

The transport network companies such as Uber, Bolt, OneDrive are causing disruptions to conventional transport modes, just as autonomous vehicles are on the horizon to be watched by airport operators.

The planning process for airports will be challenging going forward. Airports will have to gather data on various modes of transport and their shares of revenue to the airport. Some of these revenues are parking and access gates and others related to ground access. A careful analysis will reveal what effect these disruptions will have made to these revenues and mapped to those most affected.

Where ground access revenue comes less from public modes of transportation, the airport revenue is more at risk from technological disruptions. So revenues as overnight parking may be affected by such disruptions and what used to be a strength for an airport now becomes a weakness.

Investments in airport infrastructure will be affected. Car parks and access roads to an airport for instance are expensive to construct and maintain. With decreased usage of these facilities, their return on investment declines and makes future development plans very challenging.

African airports should look ahead and think of seamless connectivity between various modes of transport to the airport. A focus will be reducing congestion on roads to airports. So, with an eye on the future, the analysis will be on the effect on demand for parking spaces, future revenues as well as customer experience.

Preferences, choices and costs of the various modes of ground access will make a difference to the passenger experience at the airport. Analysing current trends and anticipating future changes will enable airports to remain resilient and benefit from these innovations.

These innovations come with improved passenger experience such as cheaper and easier point – to – point, driver reviews, estimation of trip time and location sharing with family and friends. The last feature addresses a deep concern of passengers in Africa – security. A recent billboard in Nigeria advertised the possibility of agreeing on a fee for a ride between driver and potential passenger.

To address this challenge of Transport Network Companies (TNC), any approach that seeks to strengthen the monopoly of existing conventional ground access operators will possibly create the challenge of a contestable market. A safety challenge results when private vehicles begin to see a gap in the market for ground access and want to quickly move these passengers into or near an airport at cheaper rates.

Airports will have to examine how passenger movements from these TNCs will affect the flows of vehicles within the airports and in the airports as well. There will be a need to rejig ground transport operations and monitor overall passenger experience. Airports should use these changes as stepping stones for improvements to service quality and monitoring of passenger choices and preferences.

So, airports in Africa should in the face of the various headwinds begin to rethink their approach to ground access, prepare for and anticipate future changes in ground access for resilient, reliable and customer centric services.

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