Two months inside the second-busiest U.S. airport
Peak-hour passenger-flow time studies, a data collection tool over 50% faster at 98% accuracy, and checkpoint layouts redesigned in AutoCAD, in support of the world's first One Stop Security initiative ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
- Excel VBA
- AutoCAD
- Time Studies
- Statistical Analysis
−50%
Data processing time
Ensuring 98% accuracy in passenger flow data
2nd
Busiest U.S. airport
Multimillion-dollar projects
2026
World Cup preparation
Operational planning context
OSS
One Stop Security
First-of-its-kind checkpoint initiative
Collect
Excel-VBA data collection tool built for peak-hour passenger-flow studies.
Process
Manual processing replaced by automated pipelines at maintained accuracy.
Visualize
Seat-condition heat map merging Excel, VBA, and AutoCAD for maintenance triage.
Act
Checkpoint layouts redesigned in AutoCAD. Wait times down, queue capacity up.
Context
The second-busiest U.S. airport, two months before its next big test
DFW International Airport is the second-busiest airport in the United States, and its operational planning was building toward the 2026 World Cup. I worked with industrial engineers on multimillion-dollar projects to improve efficiency and passenger experience, inside a high-security environment where every number I produced had to be right.
The marquee initiative was One Stop Security (OSS), the world's first implementation of its kind, and checkpoint layout planning needed current, accurate passenger-flow data to design around.
Problem
Great analysis starts with terrible data collection
Passenger-flow data collection was manual and slow. Time spent processing records was eating the time available for analysis, and maintenance teams had no systematic view of seat conditions across the terminal. Before any layout could be redesigned, the data pipeline itself had to be fixed.
Role
Field research intern: tools, studies, and presentations
I built and deployed the measurement layer, ran the studies, and presented the findings directly to airport leadership. The work spanned four deliverables:
- An Excel-VBA data collection system that reduced manual processing time by over 50% and maintained a sensitive sensor network to ensure 98% accuracy in passenger flow data, enabling reliable, data-driven decisions for airport leadership.
- A seat-condition heat map integrating Excel, VBA, and AutoCAD to streamline maintenance prioritization and repair tracking across the terminal.
- Peak-hour time studies on passenger flows to identify inefficiencies in checkpoint operations.
- Redesigned checkpoint layouts in AutoCAD, reducing wait times and maximizing queue capacity in direct support of the One Stop Security (OSS) implementation.
Outcome
Presented to airport leadership
I presented key findings and recommendations directly to airport leadership in that high-security setting, in front of the same people accountable for moving millions of passengers through the terminal each year. The data tool remains a reference for how the flow studies were run.
Lessons
Measurement is a product
The VBA tool mattered more than the studies it enabled, because it made the studies repeatable at twice the speed. I learned that the tooling around analysis is often the highest-leverage piece of the work, and that presenting numbers to decision-makers requires the same rigor as producing them.