Calgary International Airport II

[Tobuz]

Originally Posted by suburbia

Call to gate is hugely advantageous from a user perspective, improves "quality of time" at the airport, and physically is more efficient for airports also.

Originally Posted by Doug

CTG has to be a huge efficiency win. At traditional airports the gate side waiting areas are empty more often than not. A pooled waiting area must save substantial square footage, energy and maintenance. Of course those savings aren't passed on.

Absolutely. Totally agree with both of you. CTG makes sense in a lot of ways. The bigger issue here is with how they implemented it at YYC. People aren't "getting" that they're expected to do something different. It's not intuitive. So many people are going straight to their gates like the have in most/all of their other airport experiences.

YYC created a building and a process that requires people to behave differently than what they're used to. But didn't make it all that clear, and didn't make the alternate behaviour all that clear either.

Hence, we have a CTG airport with people sitting on floors at the gates and complaining about a lack of seating.

You only reap the benefits of CTG if the building design and the passenger process is easy and intuitive for the vast majority of your customers.

Originally Posted by s211

I'm curious how CTG works when people are on stand-by, or are wait-listed for upgrades.

The design at YYC - at least in E concourse - is that those sorts of transactions are handled at the airline customer service desks that are in the central waiting hall. Not at the gates.

There's a counter beside the Starbucks for this, with clearly marked positions for AC, UA, WS and each of the airlines with US flights. In both of my experiences so far, there have been zero airline staff at that counter. There are signs, there are computer terminals, but nobody there.

So if your flight goes IRROPS and you need an agent, or you want to try for a last minute upgrade, or you want to change seats ... it's off to the gate you go!

[LeftCoaster]

Had the opportunity to fly through the new terminal, YYZ-YYC-AMS and then AMS-YYC-YVR.

My thoughts:

- Check in and initial security in the new terminal are great, looks good and functions well.

- The internal design is sharp. Nothing unique or groundbreaking but good clean design.

- Call to gate just isn't working. I understood it from my readings on this forum but I must have been one of the only ones as it was a total gongshow at the gate. At no point was there any indication of the new procedure for those not informed. I don't understand why YYC doesn't have one or two of those ubiquitous whitehats at the end of security informing people. It would be so easy.

Overall my thoughts on the departure were solid. The return is where things really fell apart.

- Lineup to get into customs was pretty long and not well marked once you got in, lots of PAX crossing over each other trying to figure out where to go.

- Bags took forever, but whatever that happens, a little concerning though since we were the only widebody at the terminal at that time.

- Re-entering the terminal was an absolute disaster. The line to re-clear security post customs was massive, which was especially confusing as like I said we were the only widebody at the time and I think I counted only 2 smaller flights clearing customs. The lineup was so bad it went down the stairs and all the way to the doors of customs. We missed our connection and it seemed like many others did as well. Some people were trying to push to the head of the line but so many people were about to miss their connections it wasn't working. There was only one security point open (and most confusingly only a total capacity of 2). I don't know how this was so ubderbuilt given YYCs ambitions as a transit hub. This is a major issue that is not easily remedied.

- Ground staff were friendly and helped us re-book our missed connection (not a big deal only YVR) but it could have been a big issue if we were flying somewhere that doesn't have a flight every hour.

- C70 area had no food, except for the Hudson news, so that was disappointing, but otherwise was clean and comfortable.

In all, the new terminal seems to have a few problems, some of which seem easily fixable like the confusing entry to customs or adding a few seats to the gates for those who just don't get CTG. The transiting security area seems to me to be a HUGE problem though, that really puts YYC at a competitive disadvantage in attracting more transiting PAX.

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by CrossedTheTracks

Keep it out of this forum, please.

You're pretty young to be moderator - but thanks for saying please.

The implication of my comments (meant to be read between the lines) is that people who choose not to read will end up being those who missed the information.

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by zahav

You don't need to have a CTG system to have a great central area and attract people.

When it comes to costs and allocation of space, it is a zero sum game, and it also makes a difference w.r.t. the business case for the outfits that occupy the commercial bays. Two overarching factors come into play with call to gate:

1. A materially higher proportion of airport time is made available in a central food court / retail area, so when you run the numbers, for the same number of passengers, there is a drastic increase in "people-hours" spent there. That means more attractions to better stores / food places.

2. Not having call to gate means increasing the proportion of net space for space at the gate, and the infrastructure / outfitting costs skew the same vis-a-vis CTG means larger central area.

The above two, in my mind, are the over-ridding factors. Agree that you can still have a great central area without call to gate, but overall, it would be inferior to call to gate every time because of the above two factors.

[Fuzz]

Sounds like an airport designed by accountants....

So if it is designed to save money, I presume that means Calgary should have some of the lowest Airport Improvement Fees in Canada, right?


....crickets. Nope.
https://www.aircanada.com/shared/en/common/flights/pop_surcharge.html#fees

So passengers get the honour of paying more and having a poorer experience. OK, I know, I know these things are not directly correlatable, but it would be nice if they did this to save money, the savings would be passed on to passengers.

[Bigtime]

Well I'm hoping a lot of these teething issues (especially on arrival with customs) gets sorted by the time I utilize the terminal next year.

[MMMBeer]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Well I'm hoping a lot of these teething issues (especially on arrival with customs) gets sorted by the time I utilize the terminal next year.

Inbound to CBSA needs better signage and organization. But there's nothing inherently wrong with the setup that's there.

Old concourse had clearly marked separate lines for NEXUS/Crew and others coming from the escalators from second level, plus clearly marked separation for connecting pax vs. Calgary. The new Connections Centre setup needs the same.

Done right, the new OSS setup should be a dream. I have to connect thru Frankfurt on weekend having to clear security again to enter Schengen zone is PITA.

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Sounds like an airport designed by accountants

You'd better hope any project of that scope have accountants and people who understand business on the team.

I think where they fell down is that they assumed people would read. Their new video might help, but I'm not sure.

[casper]

[QUOTE=Cage;7631588]

Originally Posted by s211

I'm curious how CTG works when people are on stand-by, or are wait-listed for upgrades. /QUOTE]

Most standby travellers are non revenue poeple. Revenue standbys clear at the check-in counter, even under the old terminal approach.

Wait listed upgrades are usually cleared at check-in if there more people than seats on the aircraft (one or more gets upgraded and then the newly freed up economy seat is allocated to the revenue standby.

For instances where the wait listed upgrade is handled at the gate, this is because the its only a matter of where the person is sitting (economy or business class) rather than whether they will make the flight.

For pax wait listed for an upgrade who clear at the gate, the GA will print the BP and hand the pax the new BP when they board the flight. I routinely get notifications that my upgrade cleared while I am at the lounge, and then go down to the gate and get my new BP.



Technically you can standby for any flight and still go through pre-clearance. If you don't make your flight then you have to see a CBSA officer before exiting the sterile airside area.

In practice, airlines won't let standby pax through pre-clearance unless they have a seat on the airplane. There are a lot of minor but time consuming logistical problems to arrange getting pax rerouted to CBSA.

The one other case that I have had in the past is when you are already in the pre-clearance area and you flight cancels. I have been put on standby for another flight. Surprisingly rare. If I remember correctly the agent staples the old boarding pass that has us boarder control stamp with the new boarding pass.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Tobuz

The design at YYC - at least in E concourse - is that those sorts of transactions are handled at the airline customer service desks that are in the central waiting hall. Not at the gates.

There's a counter beside the Starbucks for this, with clearly marked positions for AC, UA, WS and each of the airlines with US flights. In both of my experiences so far, there have been zero airline staff at that counter. There are signs, there are computer terminals, but nobody there.

So if your flight goes IRROPS and you need an agent, or you want to try for a last minute upgrade, or you want to change seats ... it's off to the gate you go!

I am use at other airports in places like Europe for those transfer desks to be where you go when arrive on one airline and are connecting onto another who could not print your boarding pass. That is becoming rare these days.

[Tobuz]

Originally Posted by suburbia

I think where they fell down is that they assumed people would read.

Read what, exactly?

So the swarms and swarms of people who have complained so far about the lack of seating at the gates, or about thinking they have no option but to sit on the floor of our brand new $2B terminal . . . they're all at fault because they didn't look for or read instructions on how to use the airport that they're complaining about??

People should not be expected or required to read some set of instructions before using an airport. That's ridiculous. (That'd be kind of like a new Safeway store opening, but with the cashier stations all put somewhere other than where everyone would expect to find them -- but then blaming the customers for not looking on Safeway's website to find instructions on how to buy groceries at that store.)

Lots of travellers easily navigate through far bigger airports than YYC everyday - and airports where English language "instructions" (or even wayfinding signs) are few and far between. The best are the ones with the simplest signage - primarily icons - and where the building's design is intuitive and user friendly. Absolutely no instruction manual required.

If you're expecting all of the people who fly to or from YYC each day to first find the airport's web-site to seek out instructions? Not going to happen.

If you're expecting people to read all of the signs in an airport? Nope. When people are in airports, they look for signs if and when they need to find something. They do not stop and read every sign they see - like it's some kind of museum tour - just in case one of those signs contains vital instructions about the building.

And, realistically, how many people - other than people on skyscraperpage - would truly ever bother to watch a "how to" video that explains where to sit in an airport. (Do you think there are people in Beijing - arriving here on tomorrow's Hainan flight - searching YouTube for instructional videos on where to sit in our airport??)

Wayfinding signage will always be needed to find a bathroom or a specific gate. But, other than that, a building like this - a major, international airport - should incorporate design that's easy and intuitive for the vast majority of users.

When passengers are going to the gate way too early at a brand new CTG airport or if they're angered because they think they need to sit on the floor at that airport, the problem is with how the airport implemented CTG. Period. Not that those passengers are too stupid or lazy to read.

[Tobuz]

Here's a sampling of today's happy customers at YYC. (Both were posted the evening of Thurs Nov 23)

Sensing a theme here?

And note that the customer who posted photos is sitting on the floor while snapping them...

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by Tobuz

When passengers are going to the gate way too early at a brand new CTG airport or if they're angered because they think they need to sit on the floor at that airport, the problem is with how the airport implemented CTG. Period. Not that those passengers are too stupid or lazy to read.

Eh, I'm sure the people able to angrily tweet at the airport from the floor could have stopped and read this sign on their way over to their gate too.

[RyLucky]

What makes us more mad:

1) No water fountains in new terminal
2) No seating except in areas where we will spend money in new terminal
3) Stupid bogo wifi ads/paywall (fortunately not in YYC... yet)
4) Idiotic escalator pairing at the Core so that you need to go all the way through the mall to get up/down 2 levels

[RyLucky]

Originally Posted by CrossedTheTracks

Turns out this is a "hard" problem See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/business/airlines-are-trying-to-cut-boarding-times-on-planes.html for a nice discussion. A researcher found that pure back-to-front is among the worse methods.

I secretly believe that letting elites & non-economy passengers board first is a big part of the problem (excepting airplanes where such passengers are seated forward of the boarding door), since those passengers are concentrated in the front of the plane. (In spite of their greater likelihood to get settled more quickly than less-seasoned travelers.) Always seemed to me like what you would decide if you were designing a system to be inefficient.

That's an interesting article.

I like the idea of boarding back-to-front even numbers, then odd.

Random boarding is interesting too... I wonder if people naturally sort themselves by anal-retentiveness. I expect those with a lot of bags to try to get on early so they have more space, whereas those with no bags or people who are cool with storing bags at their feet would enter last.

Maybe the length of time it takes you to get your seatbelt on should work into the price:

$ = P + t/r

$ = total price
P = ticket price
t = time in seconds from gate to seatbelt, times some variable
r = row number

or include weight as well:

$ = [P + t/r]*[(m+b)/200]

m+b = passenger mass including all carry-on items in lbs

Surely a 3 year old burns less jetfuel than someone who weighs 300 lbs.

[Tobuz]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

Eh, I'm sure the people able to angrily tweet at the airport from the floor could have stopped and read this sign on their way over to their gate too.

They could have. But they didn't. Clearly. Just like many, many other people who have expressed emotions ranging from disappointment to outright anger when they've experienced the new terminal.

So, YYC put up a sign and posted instructions on YouTube. Great.

Now, when people don't read the sign or study the video, YYC could either say "the customer is wrong, and we're smarter than they are" and do nothing.

Or they could realize that their building design is not intuitive, that their customers have been conditioned by years of travel to go directly to their gates (and that they need to do something significant to overcome that behaviour), and that their existing signage is inadequate. And own up to the issue and actually implement some effective changes.

But back to your sign.

By the time the passenger gets from curb to check-in to CATSA to USCBP to Duty Free to the shopping/food area . . . that sign you posted is probably about sign # 187 that they will have encountered on their path. Plus they will have gone through five or more somewhat complicated processes (self check-in, self bag drop, CATSA Plus, using the CBP kiosk, and then the CBP officer grilling). If they're connecting from somewhere else, their journey will have already been that much more of a sensory overload, as they've had to find their way from their arrival gate plus figure out the golf-cart-transit system.

So, after all that, they're stupid because they didn't notice one innocuous looking sign ... and stop to read and fully digest the paragraph? Or rather is it understandable that they've stopped noticing signs, and just want to get to their gate (as they've always done) and find somewhere to sit and relax.

I've walked through countless airports. I can guarantee that I haven't even noticed the vast majority of signs, much less stopped to read them. I'd have to arrive an hour earlier for a flight if I was to stop and peruse every sign just in case it was giving me some sort of important instructions about how to "use" their building. Airports are so full of signage that they all just become a blur at some point.

As I said earlier, I'll really only look at signs if (1) I need to pee or (2) I want to know which direction my gate is. I'll only read signs if I need information that I'd expect to find on a sign.

If you put up a an advert-looking sign like the YYC example you posted - and it contains a full paragraph to read - no, I'm not going to stop and read it. I really doubt few people will. I'd walk right on by that thing, just like I would have done to the previous 186 signs that I would have encountered by that point.

There are certainly things that YYC could do with visual display that would work to fix their CTG implementation. Perhaps big-@ss monitors overhead at the entrance to the gates corridor, one separate screen for each individual gate, clearly showing each flight there, but either saying "Do not proceed to gate yet" or "Go to gate now". That would be noticeable, and specific and clear -- with a clear 'stop' or 'go' right at the entrance. But a generic paragraph on a generic shopping-mall-looking sign? Totally forgettable and won't stand out.

(And I don't think the existing flight info screens in D/E suffice for that -- at least not at the entrance to the gates corridor. Sure, they're different than the usual airport flight info screens, to try to accomodate CTG. But, to most people, they're just going to look like regular info screens from any airport in North America. Which I think most people with either (1) smartphones with airline and/or travel apps or (2) printed boarding passes showing the gate number just ignore. I do.)

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

Eh, I'm sure the people able to angrily tweet at the airport from the floor could have stopped and read this sign on their way over to their gate too.

Wow! That's pretty blunt and clear, and really shines a light on the doorknobs that said it was likely only in the fine text beside the rental car discounts. LOL!

Haters will hate. They can move if they choose.

Originally Posted by Tobuz

... that sign you posted is probably about sign # 187 that they will have encountered on their path.
<>
So, after all that, they're stupid because they didn't notice one innocuous looking sign ... and stop to read and fully digest the paragraph?
<>
But a generic paragraph on a generic shopping-mall-looking sign? Totally forgettable and won't stand out.

LOL! The guy can't read two small sentences on a giant sign in the middle of his path, but he can sure write a book about not seeing it.

[Tobuz]

Originally Posted by suburbia

Wow! That's pretty blunt and clear, and really shines a light on the doorknobs that said it was likely only in the fine text beside the rental car discounts. LOL!

Haters will hate. They can move if they choose.



LOL! The guy can't read two small sentences on a giant sign in the middle of his path, but he can sure write a book about not seeing it.

Thanks for the shot. Fair enough. YMMV.

But take a look at the proof points about how it's actually working.

YYC has put up CTG signs. They've put up CTG monitors. They've put up CTG instructions on their web-site. They had massive PR in the weeks leading up to the Oct 31 that included all sorts of info about the brand new CTG system.

Yet day after day, they're receiving the exact same complaints ... that make it clear people aren't stopping to read the signs, or aren't noticing the montiors, or aren't reading the instructions.

Lots of people are still going straight to the gates and expecting to wait there. And, day after day, people are sitting on the floors - at the gates - of our brand new $2B terminal.

So did YYC implement CTG effectively? And are all of those YYC customers actually just "doorknobs", to use your label? And therefore they deserve to be ignored?

Feel free to call me an idiot for presenting a hypotheses as to why so many people aren't getting it, and why I don't think throwing more signs at the problem is necessarily helpful. What's yours?

As long as people are providing almost identical complaints, there's a problem that needs to be fixed. And whenever someone is seen sitting on the floor of our brand new $2B terminal (that we all paid for), the YYC team deserves to cringe.

(FWIW, as I posted earlier, I personally loved my experience in the new terminal. I got it. Because I knew about the system from here, and from being an avid follower of YYC. I didn't wait at the gate at all, but rather walked straight up once it was time to board. My concern is that it's clearly not working for a lot of people, and it's causing a lot of user dissatisfaction.)

[Bokimon]

I think many customers around here in Calgary are a bit too entitled to bother to do anything that would remotely suggest a change in travel habits.
Any efforts required on their own end to physically go someplace else (usually an easy Do it yourself fix) results in livid twitter and facebook posts.

I'm sure the airport is trying their best to accommodate these complaints but deep inside I bet some of them are just shaking their heads as I am right now.
These new features are here to stay whether we like it or not, if we have a problem with it then take the existing domestic terminals and connect out of another city, I'm sure YEG would love to have some YYC pax funneling thru their gates to US and international destinations..

I sure as hell won't do that as I will actually take the time to pay attention and inform myself of whats going on and I'll bring a few bucks to buy a bottle of water or better yet, a pint of beer to chug down before I board and then get water on the plane to water down the beer belly haha.

[artvandelay]

When I hear the complaints about the new terminal I'm reminded of this clip:

(NSFW)

• Video Link