Crossing the Runway
Crossing the runway
Every day multiple planes ready for maintenance need to cross the runway at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport. The maintenance will happen at a hangar located at airside. This happens multiple times a day, while the runway is continuously occupied with departing and arriving planes. The control tower needs to control everything that happens at airside. They have the ultimate decision power. Once in a while a pushback driver asks for permission, but they are forgotten by the tower because of an unexpected event and have to wait for +30min.
The Challenge
“How might we design an in-car solution to make crossing the runway more safe and less time consuming?”
The Context
In order to cross the runway, the pushback drivers have to ask for permission from the control tower. This communication is time consuming, happens a few times back and forth and has many manual proceedings.
Pushback drivers see flights come and go, but don’t know how and when the tower makes a decision. While it is forbidden to use a personal mobile phone (which is a distraction) often flightrader is used to get more insight.
First Prototype
We decided on two main functions for the first prototype, which will be a first step towards a smart system for crossing the runway.
1. Make waiting for the ‘free’ runway more transparent, reducing the problem “Where am I waiting for?”
2. Tracking the various stages in the journey of crossing the runway: approaching runway - waiting to cross runway - crossing runway - crossed runway
insight
Asking permision
It turned out that the drivers did not stop to ask permission just before the runway, but rather earlier in the process. By getting permission earlier, they would not have to stop with the airplane; something that would rather be avoided as braking and accelerating is a very time-consuming process.
insight
Air Traffic Control
The LVNL is a stakeholder which has a lot of influence and saying in what happens at and around Schiphol airport. Changes are not to be made easily and have to be 100% safe. At the end of the project we proposed this prototype to the LVNL (Air Traffic Control The Netherlands) – a first step towards a more seamless and automated crossing.
Crossing the runway
Creating first prototype for pushback drivers in order to make crossing the runway more safe and less time-consuming
Company
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
Year
2016
Prototype Development
The Capitals
Category
UX Design
Responsibilities
• Creating Prototypes
• User research
• Together with ‘The Capitals’ created flow for app
• Setup and conduct user test; Real-time with prototype printed on paper, later with real app
• Proposed solution to LVNL