Fewer Bottlenecks, Less Crowding at Airports

— -- For years, Jim Pancero put up with rolling bags, carts, strollers and other travelers blocking his way as he moved slowly in the lines at check-in counters at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport's South Terminal.

Pancero, a Minneapolis business traveler who often goes to Atlanta, is breathing a little more easily since Delta Air Lines (DAL) opened its new $26 million ticketing lobby earlier this year. An ingenious alchemy of architecture, queue management, interior design, software and logistics, the new lobby has minimized use of traditional ticket counters. In their place, Delta has clustered 106 kiosks and redeployed its workers.

The result: shorter lines, more room for passengers to roam and swifter passage to the security checkpoint at the world's busiest airport.

Delta and Hartsfield-Jackson are among about a dozen U.S. airlines and airports that have largely given up traditional ticket counters that run parallel to the terminal entryway and force passengers to queue up in long, snaking lines that allow little room to spread out.

Instead, airports are clearing out the space, setting electronic kiosks and counters at an angle to the entryway, and spreading out passengers needing to catch their planes. The chief aim is to minimize the effects of crowds by separating passengers from each other and moving them away from the congested check-in counter.

As they build or renovate, airports are also paying more attention to aesthetics and amenities that could help them become more competitive: walled-off, separate check-in areas for premium customers; higher ceilings and more windows; more retail stores after security; and wider concourse hallways.

But travelers stand the most chance of saving time and avoiding hassles in the ticketing lobbies. The airlines like the open ticketing layout because it's more efficient, requiring fewer workers to process customers. The number of full-time airline employees has been steadily shrinking in recent years, falling about 3% since 2003. Large network carriers such as Delta, in the aggregate, have cut 13% of their employees.

Travelers such as Pancero like it because ticketing and baggage-checking move faster, and he's less apt to stumble on the stray baby stroller.

"It's much more efficient," Pancero says. "You look at each process and see how it makes the whole process flow more easily."

The starting point for the Delta project at Hartsfield-Jackson was destruction of the back offices and traditional check-in counters, which stood close to the doors and didn't leave much room for customers to line up. Together, they occupied much of Delta's 50,000 square feet in the South Terminal.