| A wonder of the airport world This article forms part of a series on Abu Dhabi International Airport’s magnificent new Terminal A, which began operations on 1 November. The Moodie Davitt Report Founder & Chairman Martin Moodie visited the terminal in late November both on a guided basis and separately as an unencumbered passenger. His interviews with key stakeholders, including Abu Dhabi Airports leadership and management, concessionaires and designers, will be published over coming days and weeks. These will culminate in an exclusive eZine post the 9 February 2024 official inauguration, designed to capture the enthralling narrative of this extraordinary project. Coming up next:
To contribute please email Martin@MoodieDavittReport.com |
UAE. In the latest feature on Abu Dhabi International Airport’s acclaimed new Terminal A, The Moodie Davitt Report Founder & Chairman Martin Moodie speaks to senior Abu Dhabi Airports management about this modern-day wonder of the airport world.
During a tour of the terminal and a subsequent chat over coffee, he meets Abu Dhabi Airports Chief Commercial Officer Maureen Bannerman; Senior Vice President Retail/Commercial Non-Aero Gareth Warwick; Vice President Customer Experience & Relationship Management Muna AlGhanim; Chief Information Officer Andrew Murphy; and Chief Programs Officer Sulaiman Al Siksek.
They were joined at one point by Abu Dhabi Airports Managing Director and Interim Chief Executive Officer Elena Sorlini – to read her interview click here.
“Obviously as an airport we want to commercialise operations but equally we also want to create a special customer experience,” says Abu Dhabi Airports Chief Commercial Officer Maureen Bannerman as she leads me on a tour of the gleaming, just-opened Abu Dhabi International Airport Terminal A.
Like all her colleagues, Bannerman – a much-respected travel retail and commercial property manager with senior stints at Dubai Airports, Network Rail (UK) and APM Terminals in Bahrain on her impressive CV – is immensely proud of Terminal A and the transformative impact it has had on the Abu Dhabi gateway. And she attributes the successful opening this year to one factor above all others – teamwork.
“This is probably the only business I’ve ever worked in, where everybody gelled together in the delivery of one vision,” she remarks. “It was palpable, you could almost taste the fact everybody was just driving towards that vision. So as an organisation ‘them and us’ absolutely just did not exist.
“That came right from the top, we all worked so closely together. Normally there can be conflicts between what projects are delivering or what commercial wants and it just didn’t happen. It was a case of how can we get this to work together to create the best passenger experience? Because we wanted it to be the best for Abu Dhabi.
“It’s something we – and me even as a non-Emirati – are just so proud of. That pride was also apparent when we did the terminal trials and opened it up to volunteers. We had hundreds and hundreds of local Emiratis turning up for hours to stand in queues to test check-in and immigration. That was because they just felt part of it, which was amazing.”
Chief Information Officer Andrew Murphy, who is charged with enhancing digitalisation opportunities and infrastructure across the organisation, picks up on the theme. “The first thing that comes to my mind about this project is pride. When you see infrastructure of this scale, and the number of people that are involved – different divisions, stakeholders and suppliers – and you know that throughout this journey everybody has been working as one, that is special.
“And when you finally get there, and you see on opening day passengers actually coming into the airport and aircraft parked on the stands, there’s a huge feeling of pride not just for yourself, but for the whole team.
“Because it has been this real team effort. I’m fortunate to have been involved in five airport openings in my career over 20 years. And I have to say this one without a doubt surpasses all of them in terms both of the effort and the reward at the end of it.
“We had to deliver all the technologies, but we were also working across every single part of the business. And it was interesting, because as a particular area needed more assistance, everyone joined in to solve whatever problems arose. And then when they were up and running and another area needed help, the same thing kept happening. There was this whole teamwork thing across the whole organisation. It was incredible.”
Vice President Customer Experience & Relationship Management Muna AlGhanim says consumer reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. “Last week, towards the end of my day around seven o’clock in the evening, I saw two French couples taking pictures, and I said, ‘How was your journey?’ They replied, ‘No, we’re here just to see the airport. We learned that it’s a new airport, and we came in to see it.”
AlGhanim quickly gave them an impromptu landside tour of departures and arrivals. “Even in [landside] departures, you have visibility of the [airside] commercial. And when you’re in the central concourse you can see the beginning and the end of the building, which is amazing.”
Chief Programs Officer Sulaiman Al Siksek [recently named among The Moodie Davitt Report’s People of the Year for 2023], who joined what was then Abu Dhabi Airports Company in 2006, reflects on an extraordinary project. “It started off with a brief – to design a building that’s iconic and that’s going to be a masterpiece for our international airport. Not just an iconic masterpiece but a landmark for Abu Dhabi,” he explains.
“For me, the journey has been actually quite long. I actually joined the development of Terminal A during the early stages of construction. When we started, it was just literally a hole in the ground, and we went from piling to pile caps to actually building the structure.”
Al Siksek vividly recalls key moments along the way. “As you can see, the building is made up of 18 arches. There was some complexity with the design of the arches and the constructability of them.
“So the day we uncovered the first set of arches, and everything actually reacted the way we were expecting them to react, that was the first emotional moment, because we were quite nervous. It is something that’s very complex, something that’s never been built before. It’s a unique design with one of the largest indoor arches in the world – up to 180 metres wide and 52 metres high. And thankfully it met all the design criteria.”
{This short video clip, shot by Martin Moodie on his iPhone, captures some of the architectural magnificence as seen in the landside departures area, complemented by stunning digital imagery}
The second big emotional high came with the successful implementation of the baggage-handling system, a perennial problem area for many airports worldwide. “We know airports often struggle with their baggage-handling system and operation, so we wanted to ensure that the system met the design criteria and the performance specifications,” Al Siksek recollects.
It did exactly that. “One of the first mega-systems to be delivered on this project was the baggage-handling system and it was extremely successful. Everybody again was extremely proud,” he says.
“And then came the rest of the facility. So if you talk about emotions, to me as I am walking through this building, I have lived through it from a hole in the ground. And sometimes it was a struggle, a lot of hard work, with various contractors and subcontractors, all working and as you’d expect in any mega project sometimes conflicting with one another – the contractor blaming the designer, the designer blaming the contractor and us trying to resolve issues.”
All the while though that vision of a masterpiece was taking shape. As the project neared completion, Al Siksek would enjoy watching the response of visitors. “I just wanted to read their reactions because I didn’t have that reaction – I was too close to it,” he says.
He remembers one visit more than any other. That of His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, who toured Terminal A in late October just ahead of its operational opening on 1 November.
“When he first entered the building, I was constantly looking at him. I just wanted to see his reaction,” Al Siksek recalls. “The first thing he did was just look around and I could see he got that wow factor. And that was priceless.
“The next emotional moment was when we started seeing passengers. That was it! It actually looked like this is the complete building. This is it. This is fine. And that was a different feeling altogether.”
Brands are responding as favourably as consumers, Bannerman says. “We have brought in a lot of the high-end premium brands and one of the brand executives came in with Gareth [Warwick – Abu Dhabi Airports Senior Vice President Retail/Commercial Non-Aero] and he walked into the building and said, ‘This isn’t an airport. This is a work of art.”
“He just melted,” adds Warwick, another executive to have poured his heart and soul into the project and who considers Terminal A to be a standout in a fine career.
“We’ve had a few brands who back in the day decided to walk away and now they’re knocking on our doors again, which is absolutely fantastic,” Bannerman continues. “Because this is an airport that’s fit for any global brand in the whole world. And we’re really proud of that.”
As is AlGhanim, when describing the powerful Sense of Place that the terminal exudes. “If you’re in the middle of the terminal, you can see Abu Dhabi in terms of its DNA. So Abu Dhabi has the desert; it has a city that has flourished; it has the Oasis [in Al Ain, a UNESCO World Heritage that dates back 4,000 years -Ed]; and then you have the sea.”
Each of the four piers in the X-shaped building pays homage via colour palette, graphics and material to one of those elements, she explains, even to the extent of pointing in their direction. “So within this airport, we can explain what Abu Dhabi is in terms of DNA, and we can take the passengers through the cultural elements. And in the centre we have the Sana Al Nour [at 22 metres high and 17 metres wide among the Middle East’s largest indoor public art features], which you can see from everywhere – departures and arrivals.
“We wanted to curate all of this to give the passenger a feel of the culture of Abu Dhabi. In this terminal, we can see a lot of stories about the country itself. So we’re really proud. I’m very proud of this as an Emirati and feel that Abu Dhabi deserves this.”
Local flavour is also key to the commercial offer, literally so with food & beverage but also in the retail mix, Bannerman says. “We’ve got offers such as The Majlis [a camel milk café experience] and The Souq [run by Al Jaber Gallery], but we’re also working in a timely and elegant fashion to bring in the arts and crafts of Abu Dhabi.
“We’re working with a couple of the foundations within Abu Dhabi to utilise the airport as part of the community and give local entrepreneurs a shop window to bring in their wares but in a very curated, cultural space. So, yes, we’ve got the global brands, but we’re also matching them with the local elements as well.”
Asked to sum up the Terminal A experience in her career, Bannerman concludes: “Oh, this tops everything. When you see the passengers coming into the terminal, their first instinct isn’t just to check in and sit down. Instead they are open-mouthed just looking and taking it in.
“That’s when you know you’ve been part of something special and it’s a legacy. It’s something of which you can always say I was part of that because this will go on and on and on and you will remain part of it. So I’m incredibly proud as everybody was to be part of the team that pulled it together.” ✈
