Posts about stuff relating to airports
Visualising Jet Blast
Sometimes circumstances align to create a video that gives a perfect opportunity to see something that is usually not visible. In this case, it was a good dusting of dry snow, an aircraft parking in the right spot near a guy in the terminal also in the right spot at the right time.
Better Emergency Exercises: Purpose, Planning & Failing Willingly
It takes a great deal of work to plan and execute an airport emergency exercise. They require hundreds of people-hours to organise with meetings, discussions, working groups, control plans and reviews. Approvals go up and down multiple reporting lines and resources (people, equipment and money) are committed.
And yet, I think the hardest part of this process, it that it all leads to everyone, and especially the aerodrome operator, opening themselves up to critique. Each exercise should be designed to push the system and to result in some kind of failure. And after all that, we ask others to tell us what we did wrong and while we know that it is better to fail in an exercise, it is never easy to openly discuss your mistakes.
images credit: (cc) Brussels Airport (Flickr Account)
What is Urban Air Mobility? An Airport Operator Primer
Just in case you’ve missed the news recently, drones are a big deal. It’s a billion dollar business, disrupting traditional business models and, most importantly for airport operator, just plain disrupting business. And, as you can imagine, just following the news doesn’t give you a necessarily clear or complete picture of our potential future with these aircraft.
I’d like to jump in and look at one particular area of this phenomenon and it’s relationship to airports but before we do, I feel like it is necessary to scan the field and sort through some of the complexity.
Image credit: (c) Airbus
Turnaround Time-lapse
Last year, I was traveling around New Zealand filming “ride-along” videos with people from airport-based organisations that have personnel driving airside. This was as part of my smarter airside drivers program under the Jilly Murphy Scholarship.
Outsourcing Airside Services
When the FIFO phenomenon took off*, mines required aerodromes to ferry workers in and out and staff to inspect and maintain them. Operating an aerodrome (some would later become airports), is obviously not core business for a mining company and thus, became fertile ground for outsourcing. This post explores the issues I have experienced and seen at aerodromes that have outsourced their airside activities and/or obligations.