Welcome to the future!

At Brussels Airport, we do everything to create a safe and secure environment for our passengers and employees. But we also want to take it a step  further, we want to put a smile on our passengers’ faces. So every day we’re looking for possibilities to further improve our operations, while ensuring that the people who guarantee safe and secure operations can do their jobs in the best possible conditions. How do we do that? By making sure that the entire process throughout the airport, from check-in to boarding, runs as smoothly as possible. That’s what we want to achieve with our Airport Operations Plan.

An Airport Operations Plan (AOP) is a plan with which we want to give all employees of the airport smart insights into the various flows at the airport. As a result, in the future our processes will be even better planned  allowing them to run more smoothly and efficiently. At present we distinguish between 3 different flows in Brussels Airport: Passenger, Baggage and Aircraft.

In the passenger flow we monitor the waiting times at security screening, at passport control and the rest of the passenger´s journey all the way to the gate. During the baggage flow we keep an eye on the bags: where do they go, and do all of the bags end up in the right airplane on time? With the aircraft flow we look at the handling process, so that we can assess whether the airplanes will be ready in time for their scheduled departure.  

With the implementation of the AOP we are adding a fourth flow: Accessibility. Even before a passenger closes the front door behind them at home, we want to predict whether they will smoothly arrive at the airport. For this we take account of traffic jams on the roads and highways leading to the airport, delays in public transportation and the number of unoccupied parking spaces at the airport itself.

By optimising and aligning these 4 processes, the journey to and the process through the airport will go much more smoothly for our passengers, while our employees and partners get the necessary room to carry out their jobs in the best possible conditions. Using data, we can even make forecasts in order to avoid troublesome situations in the future, which leads to a more pleasant experience for passengers at our airport in a safe and secure environment. And if our passengers are happy, so are we!