Fraternity in
Frankfurt

Frank­furt Air­port is the largest in Ger­many and a key hub for inter­na­tion­al trans­port. It is one of the world’s top 20 take­off and land­ing sites for the civil avi­a­tion sec­tor. Its oper­a­tors need the qual­i­ty of their ser­vices to com­pare well with those of their col­leagues in other great cities around the globe. Every­one who goes through an air­port can see for them­selves how pas­sen­ger ser­vices are set up. And these ser­vices work best when air­port oper­a­tors work close­ly togeth­er with air­line com­pa­nies. Hand in hand, with shared goals. After all, pas­sen­gers ben­e­fit when flights run smooth­ly and con­ve­nient­ly despite dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies being respon­si­ble in the air ver­sus on the ground. Far more atten­tion should be paid to this idea—in the inter­est of cus­tomers, but also to enable the busi­ness­es involved to work togeth­er more prof­itably in the future.

At Ter­mi­nal 1 in Frank­furt, the future is already here. Check-in coun­ters are being mod­ern­ized. Secu­ri­ty check­points are being equipped with new CT sys­tems that auto­mat­i­cal­ly scan carry-on bag­gage for solid and liq­uid explo­sives. The depar­ture area offers secu­ri­ty slots that pas­sen­gers can book in advance online to reduce stress­ful wait­ing times to five or ten min­utes at most. All of that is just the begin­ning. By work­ing togeth­er, the Fra­port AG air­port oper­a­tor and Lufthansa as the largest Ger­man air­line want to opti­mize their ser­vices and process­es and enhance what they offer cus­tomers. This new vision for the future is expect­ed to ben­e­fit everyone—from tourists and busi­ness trav­el­ers to the air­port oper­a­tor and the airline.

The FraAl­liance joint ven­ture was launched in the sum­mer of 2022 to facil­i­tate close col­lab­o­ra­tion in oper­a­tions at the Frank­furt trans­port hub. Fra­port and Deutsche Lufthansa each hold a 50 per­cent share. The idea for the ven­ture had arisen around three years ear­li­er. It was refined and expand­ed, and then put into prac­tice. Dr. Pierre Dominique Prümm, Fraport’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Avi­a­tion and Infra­struc­ture, calls it a rapid and pow­er­ful enter­prise “that lets us merge our mutu­al inter­ests.” Jens Rit­ter, CEO of Lufthansa Air­lines, empha­sizes its goals. “We want to offer our guests a reli­able, punc­tu­al, and first-rate trav­el expe­ri­ence,” he says. “With its inno­v­a­tive and future-ori­ent­ed mea­sures, our part­ner­ship will deliv­er con­sid­er­able added value.”

This strate­gic alliance is firm­ly focused on meet­ing cus­tomer expec­ta­tions and ensur­ing depend­able infra­struc­ture, sta­ble process­es, and value-cre­at­ing ser­vices for all parts of the jour­ney, which in turn are expect­ed to yield new sources of rev­enue. The two man­ag­ing direc­tors of FraAl­liance have ambi­tious plans. Accord­ing to Jörg Har­nisch, pre­vi­ous­ly Head of Process Improve­ment at the Lufthansa Group, “We want to make the trav­el expe­ri­ence more attrac­tive for each and every guest—and to make the air­port more prof­itable over­all.” Dirk Schus­dziara, for­mer­ly Fraport’s Senior Vice Pres­i­dent for Com­mer­cial Affairs, Ter­mi­nal Man­age­ment and Cor­po­rate Safe­ty and Secu­ri­ty, sums up the col­lab­o­ra­tion as fol­lows: “The air­port is learn­ing to think like an air­line, and the air­line like an airport.”

The com­plex­i­ty of the envis­aged trans­for­ma­tion is already appar­ent in how indi­vid­ual trav­el­ers get to the air­port. One might arrive by taxi, anoth­er by train, yet anoth­er by plane, and some­one else in their own car. All want the right kind of recep­tion cou­pled with guid­ance to their destination—as sim­ply and smooth­ly as pos­si­ble. Improv­ing Frankfurt’s mobil­i­ty hub means fur­ther devel­op­ing its busi­ness oper­a­tions, infra­struc­ture, inter­modal­i­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. As Schus­dziara explains, “Every­thing we do revolves around the customer.”

Improv­ing the process­es and prod­uct offer­ings through­out all stages of the pas­sen­ger jour­ney will also boost the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the site. An early suc­cess­ful exam­ple of the joint venture’s activ­i­ties is the Lufthansa smart­phone app, which informs users in real time of wait­ing peri­ods at secu­ri­ty check­points. Anoth­er exam­ple is the pre­ci­sion analy­sis and opti­miza­tion of pas­sen­ger flows, which will short­en con­nect­ing times for around a mil­lion trav­el­ers a year by elim­i­nat­ing dupli­cate secu­ri­ty checks. Con­nect­ing pas­sen­gers, who often have lit­tle time to spare, make up 60 to 70 per­cent of trav­el­ers at the Frank­furt hub.

The improved ser­vices at Ter­mi­nal 1, which is used exclu­sive­ly by Lufthansa and its part­ner air­lines in the Star Alliance, are expect­ed to be fully oper­a­ble by late 2023. In addi­tion, FraAlliance’s medi­um-term goal is to turn this major air­port with its approx­i­mate­ly 1,100 daily take­offs and land­ings, 500 bus depar­tures, 150 train depar­tures, and a good 140,000 pas­sen­gers into a “small town” with an array of attrac­tive offer­ings includ­ing shop­ping, leisure activ­i­ties, and con­fer­ence facil­i­ties. That will also enable Frank­furt Air­port to strength­en its pro­file. “We want to become even bet­ter hosts,” promis­es Schus­dziara. There is no short­age of ideas. Why not have con­certs at the air­port? The­ater per­for­mances? Par­ties? “Every pas­sen­ger and non-pas­sen­ger should feel wel­come and at ease with us,” says Schus­dziara. “Vis­it­ing the air­port should be an enjoy­able expe­ri­ence. And not just once.” Frank­furt Air­port is more than an inter­na­tion­al hub with long-dis­tance rail and munic­i­pal pub­lic trans­porta­tion con­nec­tions. “For many peo­ple from around the world, it is their gate­way to Germany.”

As with many trans­for­ma­tion projects, data land­scapes lay the foun­da­tions for the work by FraAl­liance too. Fra­port and Lufthansa have there­fore com­bined and ana­lyzed select­ed data sets from their respec­tive com­pa­nies. Shar­ing knowl­edge about pas­sen­ger flows is a cru­cial part of the alliance. It is the only way to pro­vide cus­tomers with indi­vid­u­al­ized ser­vices. Around 450 busi­ness­es are locat­ed at the air­port, and the IT land­scape inte­grates these ser­vice com­pa­nies and sys­tem part­ners in order to enhance multi-dimen­sion­al solu­tions too—such as “door-to-door jour­neys from a sin­gle source.”

For Jörg Har­nisch, these are exam­ples of the new ways of think­ing and act­ing at Frank­furt Air­port. The found­ing of FraAl­liance was a turn­ing point, he says. “We’re no longer play­ing on our own but instead are mem­bers of a team.” That’s clear dur­ing a short break when the part­ners play table soc­cer at the air­port office of Porsche Con­sult­ing. The end of the game presents a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask about the man­age­ment consultancy’s role in this strate­gic trans­for­ma­tion. “For us,” replies Har­nisch, “Porsche Con­sult­ing is all about under­stand­ing our cus­tomers, and about a self-moti­vat­ed drive to con­stant­ly keep try­ing to improve.”