Manchester Airport needed flexible on-board PC hardware for their fleet of airside buses so that data gathered by the driver of each bus could be recorded and uploaded to the airport’s servers in real-time. This data consisted of various events that occurred as each bus was allocated to an aircraft, such as the precise time and position of each bus when passengers started boarding and disembarking.
This information is needed to meet the airport’s agreed service level agreements with the airlines – if the agreed levels are not met then this can result in financial penalties for the airport. Prior to implementing a PC-based solution this information was recorded onto paper, so was not available to other airport staff until some time later, when it had been manually digitised at great administrative cost. The data was crucial to the airport, as it needed to be passed onto the airlines as soon as possible, in order to provide evidence that the service level agreements were met.
In-CarPC were one of two companies invited to install hardware for a pilot study that lasted several months. The superior reliability of our system made the airport’s decision an easy one, and the pilot study was concluded successfully, with an order being placed with In-CarPC to supply and install computers on the entire fleet.
With each of the vehicle-based PCs able to record precise time and GPS location information with every event, the PC-based solution dramatically enhanced the quality and reliability of the data, as well as the speed at which it was made available to airport staff.
In addition to recording data, the software running on each vehicle PC also provides instructions to the driver, such as which route the bus needs to take. Furthermore, because each PC is networked via 3G, jobs can be fed to each driver in real-time, and because the airport is using a PC-based system the possibilities for extended functionality are practically unlimited.
Christina Kelly, Operations Manager of the airport’s Bus Transport Department says “We piloted vehicle computers from two companies, one of which was In-CarPC. Their system was extremely reliable, and we found the company very quick to respond to our needs. The airport is currently working with In-CarPC on another project with different vehicles, and I would highly recommend both their product and their service.”
The Manchester Airports Group (MAG) is the largest British-owned airport operator in the UK, as the owner of Manchester, East Midlands, Humberside and Bournemouth Airports.
Client’s website: www.manairport.co.uk