STRATEGIC OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Strategic Operations Management

Strategic Operations Management

IntroductionLondon Heathrow Airport is one of the world's third busiest airports which have been located in the London Borough of Hillingdon, United Kingdom. It can sustain a heavy traffic of passengers arriving and departing through their six airports. It has its major hub for the British Airways that serves more than 193 destinations with 86 airlines flying worldwide. From which the most popular ones are the Frankfurt, Dubai, Amsterdam, New York and Dublin (Heathrow, 2013). It established as a small airfield in 1929 and later it expanded its airfield size in 1944 as a civil airport. Almost 70 million passengers travel through the Heathrow Airport while having just two runways running in the direction of west and east. Heavy guarding of security is provided because of drug trafficking, and TV crews are also there to update with all television and newspapers around the globe. It has been architected in the shape of a Hexagram because of its five terminals with one in the centre and others located beside it in a hexagonal shape. It operates in 99% of its total capacity with 24/7 arriving and departing of flights. 76500 people are employed within Heathrow Airport with a staff quantity of 6422 (Heathrow, 2013). DiscussionOperating strategiesHeathrow has been carrying strategies in the operational management of the airport where it deal with most of its operating, managerial and lower staff activities. It has four reporting points where Heathrow's aircraft itself reports at Ockham, Bovingdon, Biggin Hill and Lambourne (Heathrow, 2013). The air traffic controllers have the main operating activity where they guide the aircrafts to land and approach the destination successfully and lead them to one of the four terminals that hold the traffic of aircraft arrivals. Air traffic controllers communicate with every flight that takes off, passing by or landing at Heathrow. After the arrival and successful landing, the air traffic controllers hand over the control over the Heathrow tower to guide the aircraft to their specific terminal and let the passengers arrive in the world's best terminal and the best airport for shopping (The Guides Network, 2013).Heathrow has been awarded as the winner of the world airport awards with the world's best airport terminal and duty free shopping by SKYTRAX (Heathrow, 2013). Significantly the departure of aircrafts produced a heavy noise which affected most of the densely populated areas, so Heathrow set the west runway for the departure of aircrafts and the east runway for arrivals. This minimized the noise nuisance which affected the people below the departure and arrival of aircrafts (The Guides Network, 2013).There are strategies being followed for the day time and the night time flight timings for reducing noise and heavy trafficking from the Heathrow Airport. Certain restrictions and limitations have been made to maintain internal controls such as limiting the number of flights allowed to land in the specific time period allotted. Such as there are many noisy aircrafts which are rated as the QC/16 and QC/8 are scheduled in ...