Imagine a city where you are always stuck in traffic.

It is not that hard, right? We have become accustomed to crowded city streets and our car slowly creeping forward during rush hour. And it is usually rush hour in big cities. While this is normal today, it has not always been like this. It does not have to be like this.

There are plenty of other industries our cities could learn from. Industries that have similar challenges and still efficiently manage high demand and limited resources. Having scarce resources is not an excuse for poor management, quite the opposite actually.

One such industry is air transport. We sometimes complain about air travel. A bottle of water costs a fortune, the security is a hazel, leg space is not what it used to be and our flights are sometimes delayed. But newer aircrafts have more comfortable seats, better lighting and air, and most airlines today offer your own monitor and hundreds of movies on longer flights. And it is efficient where it counts.

An airport is primarily organized around efficiently moving people and goods safely from one place to another. Maintaining a good flow is the primary objective.

What if an airport instead was run like a city.

What would airtravel look like then?

If airports were run like cities

Say you’re a business traveler going from Copenhagen to Paris on a one day trip. You know you’re not supposed to do that any more due to the climate crisis, but today you have made an exception. What would your day look like?

You travel by train to Copenhagen Airport since you know it is hard to find good parking close to the terminal. On the train you listen to a radioshow talking about the last years changes in airtravel. It is a debate between a woman who thinks that the old system was better and a man who thinks the new way of running the airports around the world is much better.

The women argues that the shift away from centrally coordinating aircrafts in and around the airports has been just as bad as experts anticipated. Moving away from the system with landing rights (so called SLOT-times) and the control towers authority to manage the aircrafts has resulted in chaos. The busy airports have always been bottlenecks in the system and now, she argues, we don’t manage them well, with an inefficient operations as a result.

Before, she explains, an airline had to buy a landing and starting right for a specific airport and a specific time before setting up a new route. That made it possible to plan a steady flow of aircrafts during the day. It made it possible to use the capacity of each airport efficently.

Now anyone can fly to any airport at any time. This, she argues, leads to more delays, higher costs for travelers and more pollution. Attractive airports even have to build new runways and gates just to handle the same amount of passengers as before.

The man, on the other hand, argues that this new system is much more fair. It is not just the rich airlines that can fly to prime locations because they can afford to buy the landing rights. The old system was also very rigid and made it difficult for small player to start new routes. Sure, the average passenger spends 25% more time traveling because of delays and cancelations. But that is a side effect, he says, we must be willing to pay for a more flexible and equal system.

Next stop Copenhagen airport

In the middle of the debat you realize that your stop i coming up and you quickly gather your things and exit the train. Once in the terminal building you identify your flights check-in desk. The man behind the counter informs you that your flight is delayed one hour. The organisation responsible for the runways have chosen to do maintenance work on one of the runways starting today. It is the last week before Christmas. Apparently they had time now and some money left in the budget for this year.

The maintenance is causing major delays. Lucky for you, you have an early departure and the knock-on effects have not started to build yet. You know the drill though, with delayed, cancelled flights and missed connections. The return flight will be another story, but you can’t do anything about that now.

The organization running the security control seems unaware of the runway maintenance starting today. They have instead put up signs saying that they have increased staff to accommodate the increase in travel during the holidays. You can just breeze through into the gate-area.

You wonder why one organisation make an effort to increase flow when another does the opposite. Thinking about this mornings radioshow you realize that the women had a point when she talked about the benefits of coordination.

Magic of flying

Once at the gate, you stop and look out the window on the runways and taxi areas. You never seem to get enough of watching airplanes take of and land. There is something magic and futuristic about flying, even if it has been around all your life.

The view outside your window is not what it used to be though. It used to be aircrafts taking off and landing in a steady stream. Today, aircrafts are landing, but since there is not enough room for them at the gates they are stuck in the taxi area. They are in turn in the way of departing aircrafts. There seems to be a gridlock that the staff on the ground are trying to sort out by signalling to the pilots and tow-vehicles. Unfortunately, the steady stream of incoming flights are outweighing the few that are taking off, so the chaos increases by the minute.

An all to familiar sight nowadays.

Your are used to delays and have planned your trip accordingly. Ever since the politicians split up the organisation of the airport into several different organisations and removed the control tower it’s been like this. It was supposed to be better, like the man on the radio said, with more local decision making and flexibility, but they seemed to have forgotten that cooperation is also important.

It was believed that the SLOT system intruded on the airlines and their passengers right to free movement. You have to give the man on the radio that it is more fair now. Now everyone is stuck in traffic, regardless of the price you paid for your ticket. You are not sure that is a reasonable price to pay for freedom of movement and equality.

Before you got delayed every now and then when there was a snowstorm or an engine failure. Now you always get delayed. Somehow you gotten used to that and almost forgotten that it didn’t used to be like this.

After an hour and a half it is time to board the plan. You have been up since five o’clock and it is now 9:30. Not as bad as last week when you flew to Brussels.

Once everybody has boarded the aircraft the pilot makes an announcement over the speakers.

“Thank you all for flying this BS 666 bound for Paris. We apologize for the delay which was caused by a late incoming flight.”

You are always amazed by the level of sincerity the captain or any other official manages to give a non-reason for being delayed. He is basically saying he is late because he is late. You wonder if you would get away with arriving late for every meeting with that excuse without being challenged.

The captain continues to talk about why you will be stuck for another 30 minutes. Apparently the luggage is not loaded yet. The organization handling the luggage have prioritized incoming flights instead of departing flights. You know from reading an article about baggage handling that they are usually measured on the how long time it takes from arrival of the an aircraft, to the time the last bag start rolling in the arrival hall. It is good for the few arriving passengers but inefficient for everyone else right now.

Now planes about to depart are blocking several of the gates, forcing arriving planes and passengers to wait on the tarmac, contributing to the gridlock. What if the different organizations had the same goal? Or at least the same view of what an efficient operation looked like? Would that make a difference?

Not to long after the announcement, the bags seems to be on the plane and the captain slowly moves the aircraft through the maze of waiting aircrafts towards the take-off strip.

Smog around Paris

It is a beautiful morning with a clear sky. Once in the air you notice the large number of aircrafts circling the airport waiting for their turn to land. You read a report on fuel consumption the other day and apparently it had gone up by 20% due to the extra flying time around airports.

Approaching Paris the captain gives you an new update. The good news is that tail winds from Copenhagen reduced the delay with 20 minutes. The bad news is that the baggage handlers at Charles de Gaule Airport are on strike. At least that has not changed. This time they refuse to work because of poor air quality. Looking out through the smog, at all the circling aircrafts waiting to land, you think they might have a point.

Once the pilot safely navigated through the crowed airspace and the traffic jams on the ground, you are happy to walk off the aircraft. Although flying is still relatively safe, accidents have increased because of the congestion. As you walk towards the commuter train, you are happy with your choice of a carry-on bag.

The trip home

Your meeting in Paris turns out well and you return energized to the airport for your return flight. When you hear that your flight is delayed two hours you realize that you are actually very tired. Self proclaimed happiness coaches like to say that waiting time should be viewed as quality time with your self. But it is also a great way to miss time with your family, not exercise and eat poor fast-food at airports. At least you have some time for reading.

Your trip home ended up being 3 hours delayed, but you where happy it was not canceled. It is all about expectations. The problems from the morning flight was repeated again, with congestion on the ground and in the air. Only wore this time.

When you finally lie in bed at home, you think about the women from the mornings radioshow. Equality and freedom is all good, but a healthy dose of efficiency is not to bad either. If only there was a way to solve the constant queues and delays and provided freedom of movement?

The questions lingers in you mind as you fall asleep.

Epilog

Not many scare resources, like city streets, are free for us to just show up and use. You buy a ticket to go to the movies or a concert. You need a ticket to take the train to another city or a reservation at the popular restaurant. The waiter can not pretend to have more tables than he or she does. And the airlines needs a “ticket” to be allowed to land at an airport. If it is full, it is full.

Now, imagine a city where you are free to move anywhere any time, not always by car, but often without congestion and delays.