Incheon Airport has good and bad flow of traffic.
The good — not every airport got this good:
Only people with passports (and boarding passes for follow-up check) can get through the international gates area. Passports are first checked via a scanner — no one else to assist… fully automated. We had to go through a “passport scanner” for the second time later as we went through security/immigration process. I like automation a lot — it increases flow and “Poka-Yoke” — it is a Japanese term that means “mistake-proofing” or “error prevention”.
The bad — and every airport got this bad!
Everyone going to the international gates goes through two escalators… not enough for the number of people rushing towards those various gates. An unpleasant slow flow. This is a bottleneck choking the flow of traffic.
Overall, our experience at Incheon was pleasant. Lots of luxury goods at duty free shops. Nice restrooms. Not much food selections though.
Our Asiana Airline flight (airplane is huge as expected) was surprisingly pleasant as well. Stewardesses were friendly and helpful. The food was just right for the 5-hour flight to MNL (Manila). By the way, their butter was “Ballantyne” branded; caught my attention because I live in Ballantyne area in Charlotte North Carolina, USA!
At first, I was not thrilled flying with Asiana (because of the Airline’s 2013 crash). In 2013, as the plane (Asiana Airlines Flight 214) was about to land on San Francisco airport, it crashed! The landing was poorly executed.
Our descent to MNL was making me nervous — obviously thinking about that 2013 incident.
Lo and behold… our plane landed very smoothly — one of the smoothest landings I’ve ever experienced.
Now, I am a new fan of Asiana Airlines!
Asiana learned the lesson from their mistake in 2013. They’ve perfected their landings!
Key Ideas:
- Make value flow without interruption. Automate. Apply Poka-Yoke. Remove bottleneck.
- Mistakes learned, if/when applied, help prevent same failure to be repeated in the future.
My succeeding posts are about my family’s travel to the Philippines and Australia… and we are taking SAFe and the Lean Agile Way of Working/Living with us… and see how others outside of the USA are doing with the Lean Agile Way of Working/Living. Each post will have a Key Idea for you to ponder upon if you wish.
There are many other ideas like this — short but sweet ideas — in my new book, ‘SAFe (6.0) Is like …’ . It is available on Amazon… and it has reached ‘# 1 New Release’ several times! Check it out.
