Measuring the customer’s journey through London City Airport

Abstract

London City Airport (LCY) is the only London airport actually in London, handling around 70,000 flight movements and 3.65 million passengers in 2014. It is a niche business, in that some 65% of those using LCY are travelling on business and 63% are inbound, having bought their ticket at the other end of the route. Airports don’t have a God-given right to the passengers and airlines they serve. Fifty-nine per cent of airports with four million or fewer passengers in Europe are loss making — in fact, 44% of all airports in Europe are loss making (up 4% in two years). Every airport offers passengers access to air travel — but is this really enough to guarantee survival? Understanding, communicating and delivering on your airport’s passenger proposition is crucial to your success. It is all you have to make you stand out from the crowd. You must protect it at all costs. LCY has developed a passenger proposition based on four pillars — location, network, customer service and, most importantly, speed of transit. It should take no more than 20 minutes to get from front door to departure lounge, and no more than 15 minutes from tarmac to train. We call it the 20:15 promise — and it is a promise that presents an obvious challenge: how can we know if we were delivering?