At a gala presentation ceremony at the 25th German Logistics Congress in Berlin, Frankfurt Airport and Lufthansa were jointly presented with the 2008 German Logistics Award. It was conferred on the two companies over numerous distinguished competitors for their concept of “integrated passenger and baggage logistics at the Frankfurt aviation hub”.
Dr Stefan Schulte, Deputy Chairman of Fraport AG, and Dr Karl-Rudolf Rupprecht, Lufthansa’s Head of Hub Management Frankfurt accepted the prize at the gala ceremony in the historic Dresdner Bahnhof in Berlin.
The project, initiated by Lufthansa and Fraport in 2002, focused the two companies joint efforts from day one on the individual passenger. The objective was to generate perceptible improvements for each customer in respect of comfort, punctuality, reliability and connection quality.
More than half the some 54 million passengers in Frankfurt in 2007 were passing through the airport as a connecting hub. A Lufthansa flight arriving in Frankfurt has passengers on board for up to 85 connecting flights.
In face of growing capacity bottlenecks affecting both flight movements as well as activities in the terminal area, Fraport and Lufthansa joined forces and established a closely meshed logistics chain to ensure that even in a difficult operating environment all incoming passengers with their baggage would reach their flight connection in the shortest possible time, and in the most convenient, fast and easy way.
The project began with an open exchange of information on each other’s company processes. Step by step, services and IT systems, such as check-in procedures and the so-called Hub Control Centre as central coordinating unit for aircraft ground handling, were integrated to fit perfectly in the common process chain. Inter-company processes are today firm fixtures in passenger and baggage logistics at Frankfurt Airport. The success of the project is readily apparent and, above all, of great benefit to customers.
Despite rising passenger and baggage figures, the minimum transfer time between two flights has been kept at an extremely low level in an international comparison. Connecting-flight punctuality and the quality of baggage delivery have, moreover, noticeably improved.