As Schiphol, we believe cooperation to be very important. We and our aviation industry partners are facing several challenges. How can we continue to ensure safety in an increasingly crowded airspace? How do we allocate our scarce resources as effectively as possible when there are increasing demands on operations? These are challenges that can only be addressed integrally with all airport partners. By working with our partners as one ecosystem, we can proactively solve the challenges that lie ahead. This is what led to the intention to get all major airports in Europe, including Schiphol, working according to the Total Airport Management concept.
By working with partners, we are able to prepare, plan and manage together. This allows us to look at the whole process instead of just separate parts, which means we have better insight into what lies ahead in the entire airport ecosystem. This is called Total Airport Management. This integral method of management ensures that we can better manage capacity together with our partners. Performance improvement becomes visible chain-wide in better On Time Performance (OTP), better capacity utilisation and effective information sharing between chain parties and the passenger.
One building block on the way to Total Airport Management (TAM) is the creation of the APOC. The APOC stands for the Airport Operations Centre. The APOC was set up in 2019 as the central location within Schiphol to facilitate cooperation between different parties at the airport to prepare operations on a daily basis. Every day, these parties work together to make airport operations more predictable, flexible and efficient, and to reduce recovery time after disruptions. This contributes to the performance and passenger experience at the airport. The APOC seeks to achieve these goals by encouraging a different way of thinking, collaborating and acting. The APOC focuses on overseeing separate processes at the airport (such as the passenger, security, baggage and aircraft processes) in order to prepare them properly. This is done by identifying and solving data-driven capacity issues.
The biggest challenge is that there are many external parties working at Schiphol, all of whom have an impact on operations. These include the various airlines, security companies, baggage handlers and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee. For a smooth operation, an integrated plan must be drawn up daily with all these chain partners. A plan in which we look at what we are facing in the operation and what the joint outlook is. We record this in the Airport Operations Plan (AOP) and share it with all our partners.
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