Making things better for the passenger - Check-in
Why should each airline have its own check-in desks? Concentrating the passengers for a flight into one small area all at the same time just creates queues and congestion. You see it all the time at airports everywhere.
From personal observation it seems to me that an airline will usually occupy 4 check-in desks (1 for First/Business and 3 for Economy) for about 2¼ hours – 2 hours actual processing time and 15 minutes to set up/wipe down before vacating for another airline to use.
Again from observation a flight of (say) 200 passengers is processed in about 90-100 minutes (about 2 minutes per passenger) which means that the desks are not actually working for a third of the time they are occupied by the airline.
If half the passengers arrive at check-in on time there will be a queue of at least 25 people at each desk for the first 45 minutes.
Using that as a benchmark, an airport handling (say) 30 similar sized departures an hour will require a minimum of 270 manned check-in desks.
Now for the really freaky bit.
Reduce the total number of check-in desks to 200 (a 26% saving for the airport operator), keep them permanently open and make them available for any passenger on any departure.
200 passengers turn up on time for their flight to find 200 check-in desks available for them to use. 2 minutes later their check-in is complete.
The next 200 passengers arrive for their flight to find 200 recently vacated check-in desks ready for them to use. 2 minutes later – and so on and so on.
Don’t believe me? Do the math yourself.
This is probably what British Airways wanted to achieve at Heathrow Terminal 5. They were, after all, the sole users of the available check-in desks. What screwed them was the collapse of the baggage handling system for reasons that have yet to be determined (and published) although there is a question as to how many check-in points were actually open.