AIRPORT STUDY
Allan Poe’s story ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom’ in which the narrator returns ‘home’ from what might be described as an experience similar to that of the ethnographer to find that no one recognises him anymore – neither his friends, his wife, or children. In this strange parable-like story, the narrator is then condemned to live in a kind of exile for the rest of his life. This is obviously an extreme logical end-point, but recent reports suggest that my wife still recognises me and, given that she has just given birth to a little baby girl, I kind of think that I must have been home at some stage in the past year! In terms of day-to-day routines, I am following a group of
project managers around the airport as they demolish, design, build and re-build terminals and surrounding infrastructure. The challenge is to study an object that is in a constant process of mutation and transformation. I have also recently completed a circumnavigation of the airport
boundary in which I set out with maps, compass, theodolite, camping equipment, food rations, etc (I did not know how long this would take me) in an effort to take some reading of the landscape and the physical presence of the airport. On the boundaries one finds a fascinating ‘hinterland’ that attracts all kinds of residents and communities who live a very transitional kind of life. I came across a camp of full time ‘plane spotters’ for example, and set out in search of a rumoured mysterious cult of the Great Crested Newt who was holding up vital repair work to the runway and apron.
What is the aim of the experiment? Ethnography seeks to comprehend the organisation or community, as the ‘insiders’ – the ‘natives’ or inhabitants, understand it. In other words, what do the people who work here think about the airport and how does this thinking shape the way they inhabit the world and create and re-create its reality in day-to-day rituals and routines? How do they speak? What is their language? Project managers, for example, talk a strange tongue. As I write this, my colleague John Sherrington is talking with a ‘QS’ about ‘cost plans’, ‘draw downs’, ‘soffit’, ‘PDRs’ and ‘tenants demise’. It seems to make sense to his colleagues, but to experience this as an
outsider is vital to the process of what some in my own world call ‘de-familiarisation’, which provides one way of finding space to question what is being done in an organisation in a more radical way than typical of many ‘expert management consultants’. De-familiarisation helps develop a form of questioning that both opens up blind spots in everyday routine practices and exposes those features of working habits that have become so obvious that they are no longer remarked upon. The airport is a complex jigsaw puzzle of occupational ‘specialisms’
and expertise that all develop a highly contrived and specialised vocabulary in which is ‘telescoped’ or contained a whole world of assumption and understanding. It is vital to understand the complexity and minutia of these practices if we want to understand the ways in which current practices have, or do not have, the capacity to think creatively and innovatively about the future.
How do you interact with airport staff/the flying public? Typically, academic research deploys its own highly contrived methods of ‘interaction’ – surveys, interviews, questionnaires, statistical sampling, etc. These all remove the individual from the ‘flow’ of everyday life and it is this flow that I am trying to get access to through the methods of ethnography. When done well, this opens up a much
richer world of social interaction, and with the implicit trust that comes when you have become part of the furniture, so to speak, people talk in ways that are much more revealing of things like management and organisation. In this sense, it is important that I’m not viewed as having been commissioned by senior management at the airport. It is to the credit of senior executives at the airport that I have been able to carry out this kind of research in ways that scrutinise the very fabric and underbelly of organisational life.
Based on your experience to date, would you say that airport terminals are customer friendly? This is a difficult one as how do we define ‘customer friendly’? Are we saying that terminals in the 1950s were not customer friendly? In a way there is a lot of rhetoric about the bad old days and the importance of moving forward, changing old habits, etc. And this is all very well and good. However, people might remember the ‘bad old days’ as a romantic era of international jet-set travel. Passing through Saarinen’s TWA terminal in Idlewild (now JFK), for example, was like entering a futuristic world of science fiction. However, they were definitely ‘passengers’ in those days, not customers. We talk about customers, and customer friendly, but where do we
get our ideas about what this means? Think about the hula-hoop. Before its invention no one would think ‘hey, wouldn’t it be great if we made a piece of plastic to spin around our hips?’ In other words, the hula-hoop created the hula-hoop customer. You see my point? What I am finding is that what we mean by ‘the customer’ and what we mean by ‘customer friendly’ are all contingent outcomes of a fiercely fought ‘contest’ of expertise and occupational interests. Obviously, such things as queue lengths and clean toilets are
extremely important, but I am trying to think in other ways to try and grasp elements of the future of airports – and here we have to be prepared to think that ‘the customer’ will disappear! It is hardly contentious I think to say that what customers wanted in the 1980s is very different from what they want in 2010. Just consider the emergence of what people are calling the ‘Y2-Gen’.
Where is there possible room for improvement? I am looking behind the scenes at the moment. Following the people who actually make the terminals and operate and service the flow of customers as they are processed through the various spaces that make up a terminal. Here there are all kinds of innovations and experiments taking place to re-think the customer and their experience of airports – handheld digital technologies, for example, iPhone apps, Grindr, virtual avatars, and personal navigation assistants. What is most interesting from my point of view is whether airports ride on the back of wider social and cultural changes in technology use or whether they actually ‘originate’ or lead the market in terms of innovations and new products and services.
Have you noticed a difference in the attitude and behaviour of passengers between when they are landside and airside? Yes, typically whilst landside passengers are more anxious and preoccupied with things like getting parked or finding their way to check-in desks and security clearance queues, once airside there is a greater sense of ease that they are finally on their way and that the holiday has started. Time for a drink! And time to shop! These are things
AIRPORT WORLD/AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 61
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