دانلود رایگان مقاله بررسی اکتشافی خدمات مضاعف مسافربری زمینی در فرودگاه توسط مسئولین خوشامدگویی

abstract

A significant share of airport passengers are accompanied to and/or from the airport by friends and relatives to wave them off or greet them when they land. At some airports the number of these ‘meetergreeters’ can be substantial, which can have important ground access planning, economic and environmental implications for the airport operator. Yet this group have received comparatively little attention in either the academic or industry literature. Consequently, to some extent ‘meeter-greeters’ have remained something of a ‘hidden’ element of ground access user. In an attempt to address this, the paper uses secondary data analysis of the UK CAA Passenger Survey Report to explore ‘meeter-greeters’ at five UK airports; Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted and Luton. Focus is given to assessing the scale of ‘meeter-greeter’ journeys and the role of a passenger's trip purpose (business/leisure) and resident status (resident/non-resident) in this process. A key finding from the analysis relates to the disproportionate impact of multi-person trips, where a number of different ‘meeter-greeters’ accompany a passenger to the airport. The implications of these findings are discussed and a number of recommendations for decision makers proposed. Namely, it is suggested that airport monitoring and assessment procedures should incorporate a measure of the additional trip generation by ‘meeter-greeters’ in order to present a more complete picture of the number of people accessing/egressing an airport.

6. Discussion and conclusion

The paper examines an important, yet largely under researched, area of air transport operations. Namely, by means of secondary analysis of freely available passenger survey data the paper provides one of the few attempts in the literature to quantify the role played by airport ‘meeter-greeters’ in a ground access context. While necessarily limited in scope and complexity given the relative lack of relevant data, if nothing else, the findings indicate that in some cases very large numbers of people travel to and from airports with the sole purpose of ‘meeting and greeting’ air passengers. For example, in the case of Heathrow it was found that the number of annual ‘meeter-greeters’ generated were equivalent in scale to the number of annual passengers handled at East Midlands Airport, the UKs 11th busiest airport.