It is Mark Powell’s job as director of baggage operations to make sure that bags and suitcases travel through the airport from check-in or bag drop and on the plane, or from the plane on to the right carousel in the arrivals hall as quickly as and as accurately as possible.
For him, it is important to understand the world behind the data and in this context of luggage and baggage, this means getting out onto the concourses of the airport terminals to see the bags moving through the system and the equipment they travel on. “It’s about sharing the data being able to match up that data side with the reality,” said Powell.
The most useful things he does on the ground are relationship building, seeing how the data is collected and properly understanding the questions he is trying to find answers to. This can reassure those working at the coalface of airport baggage that their views are being properly taken on board and any misunderstandings can smoothly be rectified.
Powell’s most interesting data challenge is a current one in which he and his team are looking at how they make use of the capacity in the system to reliably get bags through whilst volumes increases due to higher passenger numbers.
“The historic way of doing this is predicting, so looking at what do we think the demand is going to be, what do we need and what is the current capacity. Then needing to build something,” said Powell.
In contrast, now Powell and his team – the baggage data analysis team, thought this is not the official title - aim to use data to avoid building something new but change the process to make more efficient use of it.
“Data is becoming the solution. It is not just highlighting the problem.”
“Data is becoming the solution. It is not just highlighting the problem,” said Powell. An example of this is seeing how many more flights they can fit efficiently into one make-up area – a packing point for bags before they end up on a flight. With robust operational data, he is able to predict at a granular level the volume of bags coming through and when they will turn up.
By operationalising data into the process, he and his team can have a good forecast every day and adapt their plan depending on the specifics of what they are expecting that day, whether that be the number of flights coming in, the number of passengers on connecting flights and even whether those flights are early or late. He asked: “Does that allow us to adjust how we do it? The answer is yes.”
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