What is the number of counters that need to be open?

The number of people who prefer to travel by air is increasing every day. A continuous increase is seen in the volume of air traffic. It is estimated that the number of passengers would double in the next 20 years. The airlines, airports and ground handlers have deal with a growing demand these days, as more and more people are taking air journeys. So, the difficulty is that how many counters at the airport need to remain open to deal with the growing demand, while also using the resources in an efficient way. It is natural that more counters need to stay open at rush hours like in the early morning and evening, so if there would be around 800 people to deal with at a time and if you give a single counter 50 people to deal with, then 16 counters need to stay open during a rush hours and when there is less people to deal with then the number of counters can also be reduced.

Question # 2

At the airports every person is in a hurry and every customer wants to be serviced first. This situation poses a serious problem for the airport management. At sometimes the airport traffic is more than other times and the airport staff have to determine how many counters to keep open without keeping the customer in wait for long and also not wasting the resources on unused counters. So if we assume that the rush hour is 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening, and there could be around 2000 people visiting the airport during those hours, and as we have assumed 16 counters so there could be around 125 people visiting a counter for inquiries in 2 hours and if each customer takes 4 minutes than average waiting time would be 4 minutes as well.

Answer # 3

There could be multiple queues or a single queue according to the requirement. Most flights are during the early morning and early evening. So, it is natural that more queues and counters would be needed during those hours.

Answer # 4

Yes, there needs to be dedicated queues for each counter. In case there is no dedicated queue for any counter and people are just haphazardly standing wherever they want to, there would be hard to handle things and a panic would be created in such a case. So, there must be dedicated queues for each counter and people need to strictly follow queues for any queries.

Answer # 5

According to my analysis an important aspect that is being missed is the quality of service, that would be delivered to the passengers. The focus is on the number of counters to remain open to deal every passenger, but the quality of service that would be delivered to the passengers is not discussed here. The quality is the main point, if the customer is dealt with and he do not get satisfied with the service he got or he does not get the amount or type of guidance he needed. Then it would not matter if he gets a counter or a customer service officer to deal with him or not.

Answer # 6

It is important that every customer gets his query answered within time, and he gets into his flight within time. So for that purpose it is important that every customer gets the answer of his queries within time and do not gets late. If the customer has to wait for too long at enquiries than he is definitely going to get irritated and might miss his flight. So it must be made sure that he do not have to wait for too long, at enquiries this can be ensured by estimating an average of the number of customers that would be in the airport at the rush hours and this can easily be done by counting the number of flights and the passengers. According to that number they can open counters and make sure that there are enough counters open that each customer would get the answer of his queries within time.

Answer # 7

In order to make sure that the airport resources are not going wasted and there are not excess counters open, the airport staff should make an estimate of the number of customers that would be at the airport within the next few hours or the next day and then according to that number they can estimate the number of counters that need to be open to deal them all adequately and within time. In this way there would be no spare counters open and the customers would also get along easily.