Airports face major growth challenges ahead as they prepare to support a projected doubling of passenger numbers over the next two decades, but along with the problems of infrastructure, land limitations, and adoption of the smart technology which will support growth, they face a problem in recruiting.

As Chi-kee Ng, executive director, airport operations, Airport Authority Hong Kong, said during the Passenger Terminal Expo in Stockholm this week:

“When you talk about smart technology… we have to talk about people. When we complete our next expansion we will be talking about handling 100 million passengers. We need the [human resources] and these people have to be able to use all of the technologies that are available.”

However, Ng says that attracting and retaining people can be difficult:

“I just read the newspaper yesterday, unemployment was 2.9%—that is really full employment, so resources are going to be a problem. Second, a lot of youngsters don’t want to work at the airport anymore. Airport jobs are no longer as sexy as they were.”

To work-around the staffing challenge, Hong Kong Airport Authority has set up dedicated training centers that can help people get onboard with aviation jobs, even employing virtual reality to build skills.

“We set up the academy to do four things: 1) to attract to work in the aviation industry, 2) to prepare them to take up jobs, 3) to nurture them, because a lot of people in the job don’t have a degree, but they want to have a degree so we [offer] part-time studies, and 4) to grow, to take up more senior roles.

“We are building a permanent campus, and we have introduced a virtual reality training center…For people who drive monorail, we have the driving examination, but we also have a virtual reality training center which offers virtual reality training for driving. For people who operate baggage conveyors, we have introduced the aircraft fuselage training facility so that you can practice the parking without damaging a real aircraft.”

But the importance of technology to growth makes recruiting people who specialize in technology critical, and here airport managers run into a conundrum.

As Miami International Airport’s director of information systems and telecommunications, Maurice Jenkins, says:

“Employee is the key extension of your intellectual property. Without them, there is no technology that can run, manage or maintain your organization or your enterprise.”

But when there are IT openings within an airport, Jenkins says recruiters can find quality individuals with no airport IT experience, which raises a question on whether there is a differentiator between enterprise IT and Airport IT.

Chi-kee Ng believes there does have to be a differentiation in terms of hiring for airport tech jobs, compared to technology jobs in other industries. He says:

“An airport has to be smart in using smart technologies, because a lot of smart technologies just focus on the technology itself, without really taking into account the whole process of the operation of the terminal. So when you look at [a technology application], it sounds very sexy..but what does it really bring in terms of an airport environment? Does it make it more simple? Does it save cost? Does it save manpower? Or, really, because you have the technology, did you solve one problem but create two?

“For those who are actively developing things for airports, they really have to understand the nitty-gritty of the aviation industry to make [technology] simple and to [use it to make the staff’s job easier or the passengers’ [journey] easier.”

But simplicity can be sexy, no? Airports can only hope so.

Related reading:

Realising the value in airport technology, passengers first

How airports are working to keep up with dramatic growth