Nedap AVI

European airports European airports generally take the view that commercial vehicles such as hotel buses, limousines, taxis or rental vehicles are providing a service to the airport’s passengers. However if it were not for the airport, there would be no business for the commercial vehicles. So leading airports in Europe decided to charge these commercial vehicles for the privilege of being allowed to use the airport’s terminal facilities. Generating revenue from commercial vehicles on the land side of an airport is becoming an increasingly and lucrative practice in Europe. The goal is to regulate the commercial vehicles allowed to service the airport to maintain high quality of customers service.

Taxi dispatch system at helsinki-vantaa airport

As main gateway to Finland, Helsinki-Vantaa Airport continuously is improving its customer service facilities.
Taxi transport is an important way of traffic, especially for this airport, because it is used by more than one third of the ten million incoming and outgoing passengers. To regulate the terminal traffic on the landside the Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) implemented a new system, using Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI). A new company was established to take care of the taxi services at the airport and to operate the Automated Taxi Dispatch System at the airport. This new company is called ‘Taxipoint’ and is a joint venture by a CAA subsidiary company Airpro-Finland Airport Services Ltd and the local taxi company Vantaa Taxi Ltd.

The taxi lanes are equipped with TRANSIT readers, which identify the taxis by reading the windshield-mounted tags. All taxis are obliged to enter the terminals via the taxi buffer zones which can handle nearly 200 taxis at the same time. A large display and several monitors inform the drivers on-line about the current situation at the terminals.

The taxi dispatch system is operated from the taxi service centre located in the buffer zone where cameras watch the taxi queues and the pick-up points at the terminals. Because the buffer zone is located relatively far from the terminals there is no visual contact between the taxi queues. Therefor the taxis must be controlled by an AVI system, which automatically guide them from the buffer zone to one of the taxi queues.

The system also provides important management information for planning and statistics. The Helsinki-Vantaa taxi dispatch system operates similar to the ones on several worlds top airports. The installed system needed to meet to the high requirements of the CAA for a reliable, secure and convenient control of the taxi traffic on the land side of the airport.

Features

• Reliable dynamic identification up to 10 metres
• Compliant to world-wide airport radio regulations
• Non-stop convenient taxi identification