Taking our Aviation Industry Knowledge To Other Sectors

Eurostar St Pancras Terminal

Although we mainly work with airports, AiQ Consulting and our talented team are able to respond and adapt to a variety of client needs. We can transfer our skills, knowledge and tools to many different sectors that benefit from capacity planning and simulation.

In 2016, AiQ Consulting was asked by the high-speed railway service, Eurostar to apply our extensive terminal knowledge from the aviation industry to carry out a capacity and feasibility assessment for their St Pancras terminal.

Alongside Gebler Tooth Architects , we were asked to look at how to speed up the process of the terminal’s business lane. This extremely busy 50 metre stretch takes business passengers through priority check in, screening, UK emigration and passport control under French immigration before business passengers travel on either to their business lounges or the general departure waiting area.

Eurostar was aware of the problems caused by passenger security, check in and immigration being highly compressed into a very small space due to terminal constraints. At busy times processing passenger movements was very difficult and caused large queues. What could be done to speed up the process, and make passengers flow easily from check in to their business lounge?

With this in mind, our talented team carried out a feasibility study with detailed customer surveys and architectural studies, simulated business passenger flow and presented a number of options to Eurostar. We were also asked to improve the use of the business lane area and access to business lounges, as well as exploring whether immigration gates would relieve the congestion at French immigration. As such, we considered the impact of online check–in and/or an e-ticket barrier, as well as improvements to security screening machines, searches, exit checks for UK border authorities and more.

This was an exciting project for our team, and was well received by our client, Eurostar. They are considering the options we have given them for improving the flow of the business lane, we have been asked to look at a seating capacity assessment within their departure area. This job will take AiQ onto the next stage, the Scheme phase from Eurostar’s chosen option.

Find out more about our Eurostar Case Study