Five minutes with Esther Nitsche

Photo: Fraport AG

So firstly, the Terminal 3 project sounds really exciting. How are you going to ensure a smooth opening in 2026?

We started our operational readiness and airport transfer (ORAT) programme in mid-2023, so about three years ahead of opening of Terminal 3. We want to ensure a smooth opening; we will integrate all stakeholders into the ORAT programme and make sure that everybody is prepared for operation from a staff perspective, from a process perspective. We will also provide the entire training programme, co-ordinate all staff to be fully trained and with the operational trials, we will simulate operation in the new terminal beforehand and make sure that everything works smoothly.

In terms of the ORAT programme, who are you working with on this and what elements and data are you feeding into the project?

We are providing the ORAT programme in-house. I work for the International Business Unit of Fraport and we are the in-house consultant for our aviation department who’s like the ORAT owner for Terminal 3. We work with internal staff, not with external consultants on this programme, and we are in charge of all the elements of ORAT. We are developing the operational documentation, so we have already developed the operational concept for Terminal 3. We are also taking care of the standard operating procedures, ensuring that they are all developed and updated for Terminal 3 in time.

We will co-ordinate all training, including familiarisation for all staff that will work in Terminal 3 in the future. And of course, we’ll organise the operational trials and we’ll also co-ordinate the entire relocation into Terminal 3.

Have you done one of these ORAT programmes before within Fraport or is it relatively new for you?

Fraport has undertaken/delivered ORAT programmes in the past. Of course, the last infrastructure that we took into operation was our Pier A-Plus in 2012. We’ve had some minor projects in between and we also provide the ORAT projects worldwide for external clients and for other airports of the Fraport group. For example, we provided ORAT in Greece where we constructed many new terminals at our 14 airports there. At the moment we are also running ORAT projects in Lima and Antalya where we have big expansion projects going on.

How do you promote operational excellence within your teams?

We operate 30 airports worldwide and of course we want to provide operational excellence within the entire Fraport group for all our airports. To do this, we run certain exchange formats with all our airports in the group. For example, we have an operational exchange where all the Chief Operating Officers and Airport Managers of all the airports come together and exchange on best practice, exchange ideas, experience, and make recommendations to each other. We do this live, but also online on a regular basis, to work together and to profit from each other.

What technology is crucial in your opinion to ensuring operational excellence within airports?

I think it really depends on the type of airport we are talking about. Within our group we have all kinds of different airports. We have of course Frankfurt Airport, which is huge and our hub airport. But we also operate very small touristic airports, for example, in Bulgaria or in Greece, and not every airport requires the same technology.

Naturally, we consider whether a technology that we have in Frankfurt could also be suitable for our other airports in the group. We also do a lot of test runs, often using our airport in Ljubljana as an innovation hub where we test new ideas to check if it’s suitable for any other airport. We also run a digital factory in Frankfurt in our corporate strategy department where we test a lot of new technologies, do proof of concepts and work on AI projects to see if this makes sense for us and could result in an improved passenger experience that we can implement at our airports.