Spain is a country with a booming services industry. Tourism, the leading industry, concentrates in the Balearic and Canary Islands and on several areas in the South of the Peninsula.

To serve this and other services industries a major network of airports was created, which now serves 100+ million passengers per year. AENA is the agency in charge of operating the airports (as well as of air traffic control).

The airport network is comprised of airports whose traffic comes primarily from scheduled flights (business, connections) --such as Madrid and Barcelona, both among the top ten European airports- and of tourist airports such as Palma de Mallorca and Tenerife- which are world-wide leaders, and have the largest European weekend traffic peaks--.

Over the last 11 years, WITNESS - used to simulate passenger and baggage flows)- has been an important tool enabling AENA to adapt the layout and the resources of passenger terminals and to support and improve service quality.

The first model proved that AENA could achieve a 15% potential savings in resources (check-in counters, baggage-handling carrousels, and staff) while maintaining quality standards (length of passenger lines, waiting time, etc.).

This evidence led AENA Airport Operations Management to an initial purchase of 4 WITNESS systems and to train a group of engineers who used the systems on its applications to key processes within a terminal: check-in; departure filter controls (security, police, emigration); baggage handling; platforms operation (loading bridges, stands, buses, etc.); arrival filter controls (immigration, customs) and baggage pick-up. WITNESS was also used to redesign Madrid and Barcelona airports with new terminal areas (processor and satellites) using automatic baggage handling, etc.

These operational applications led to new fields of application. Passenger flows along terminal corridors were correlated with shop (duty free, specialist shops) turnover, using the airport-wide AENA -operated Point of Sale Information System.

Purchasing patterns were associated to passenger types for each specialised shop. This is the way commercial areas for the terminal expansions are currently being designed. AENA Commercial Management decided upon a new acquisition of WITNESS Systems, for use by their commercial executives.

The latest development is a generic parameter driven model capable of determining the overall capacity of any airport. The model "builds" an existing or projected airport from a menu of the different resources, generates a flight schedule and confirms the viability or saturation of all-critical stages. We feel confident that this technology will be of application in large and complex airports such as those in the European Union, USA and Far East.

On the threshold of the 21st Century, when services burgeon at the same high rate as user demand, the time to simulate services processes - with WITNESS - has arrived. AENA with its 15 WITNESS systems and its vast library of models in use all over their airport network and air traffic control centres is an illustration of modern and cost-efficient management in the services industry.