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Managing Airport Slip Risk: Why Terminals Need the Right Floor, Not Just More Cleaning
Airport slip risk is the likelihood of someone slipping on a terminal floor, driven by wet weather, heavy footfall, smooth surfaces and the way floors are cleaned. Cleaning more often does not automatically reduce it, because cleaning removes dirt, not risk, and the wrong product or method can lower grip. Managing it means measuring the grip of the floor in the highest-risk zones, matching the care to the surface and keeping proof that the result holds.
Your floors are cleaned constantly. That doesn’t make them safe.
If you manage facilities at an airport, cleaning is probably the most visible part of your slip prevention. Teams work around the clock. Machines run through the night. After a near miss or a wet day, the instinct is to add another clean to the schedule. It feels proactive, because it is activity, and activity feels like progress.
That belief is worth challenging: if we clean more, we will eliminate slips. Cleaning is an activity. A safe floor is an outcome. You can lift weights every day without getting stronger if the technique is wrong, and you can clean every day without making a floor safer if the product or the method is wrong. This article sets out a better standard for airport terminal floor safety: the right floor, with the right care, proven by measurement rather than assumed from how the floor looks.
Why is airport slip risk different from other buildings?
Terminals bring together several risk drivers that rarely sit in one place. Footfall is heavy and continuous. Passengers are often hurrying, pulling luggage, pushing trolleys or watching a departure board instead of the floor. Many do not know the building, and many are tired.
Weather is carried in constantly, on shoes, coats, umbrellas and luggage. Arrivals and entrances can be wet within minutes of rain starting.
Terminals also tend to have large areas of hard flooring, often chosen for appearance, durability and ease of cleaning. Those surfaces take years of wear from wheels and feet. Where the floor has worn smooth, it holds less grip, particularly when wet.
Add operations that run almost non-stop, and cleaning has to happen around passengers rather than in a quiet window. That is a hard environment in which to get the right balance.
Why doesn’t cleaning more fix airport slip risk?
Because cleaning solves a different problem. Cleaning removes contamination, such as water, spilled drinks, food and dirt. It does not change the grip of the surface underneath.
A terminal floor can be cleaned many times a day and still carry real slip risk. The surface may have worn smooth, so no amount of mopping or scrubbing restores its grip. Or the cleaning itself may be part of the problem, which is the next point.
This is also why the pattern repeats. If more cleaning alone solved the issue, near misses would not keep clustering in the same places. When they do, it is a strong sign that the cause is not how often the floor is cleaned.
Can cleaning make an airport floor more slippery?
Yes. The wrong product or method can quietly make a floor more slippery, even while it looks spotless. There are a few common ways this happens:
- Residue: some products leave a film that lowers grip once it dries, particularly on polished floors
- Wrong product for the surface: what works on one floor material can be unsuitable for another
- Leaving floors wet: machines and mops add moisture, and a floor that is still damp is more slippery than one that is dry
- Too little rinsing or drying: leftover chemical and water can build up over time
- Wear from aggressive methods: over the long term, some methods can wear the surface and reduce its texture
None of this means cleaning is the enemy. It means cleaning needs to be matched to the floor. Where possible, intensive cleaning is best done out of hours. Where it has to happen when passengers are present, signs have a real role for the temporary hazard that cleaning creates. A sign is not a substitute for a floor with the right grip, but it is a sensible warning when you are mid-clean.
Where does airport slip risk concentrate?
Not every part of a terminal carries the same risk, so it helps to think about zones rather than treating every square metre alike. The CHIMES framework gives a structured way to look at what is driving risk in each one:
- Contamination: rainwater, melted snow, spilled drinks, food and cleaning residue
- Heel: the footwear passengers wear, which you cannot control, and the footwear staff wear, which you may be able to
- Individual: who is exposed, from hurried travellers with luggage to staff who spend whole shifts on the same floors
- Maintenance: the cleaning products, methods and timings in use, and whether they help or reduce grip
- Environment: weather coming in, lighting, ramps, steps, travelators and transitions between wet and dry areas
- Surface: the floor material and its measured slip resistance
In most terminals, the zones that deserve closest attention are:
- Entrances and kerbside doors, where outdoor weather meets indoor flooring
- Arrival routes and baggage reclaim, where wet coats and luggage come in
- Areas around food and drink outlets and seating
- Toilets
- Transitions between flooring types, and the approaches to ramps, steps and travelators
A useful way to think about it is by speed limits. Most of a building is a 70 mile an hour zone, where keeping floors clean, dry and free of spills is enough. The areas above are 20 mile an hour zones, where you need to go further.
How do you tell whether the floor or the cleaning is the problem?
By measuring. Slip resistance is assessed using pendulum testing, the method preferred by the HSE and relied on in UK slip litigation. It swings a rubber slider across the floor to mimic a heel strike, and produces a Pendulum Test Value (PTV). A PTV of 36 or above is generally regarded as low slip potential. Below that, risk rises as the number falls.
Testing should be done wet as well as dry. A dry reading says little about how a floor will behave in the rain.
Measurement lets you separate causes that otherwise look the same:
- If a zone tests poorly even after a thorough clean, the surface itself is likely the issue
- If a zone tests better after the floor is properly cleaned with a suitable product, contamination or residue was the cause
- If readings fall after a change of cleaning product or contractor, the new approach may be reducing grip
Without that data, the response to a slip is another clean. With it, you know which fix will actually help.
What does “the right floor, the right care” involve?
The Slipology Method gives a repeatable sequence that works across a terminal.
Assess: measure the real risk in the priority zones, wet and dry.
Amend: fix the floor and the conditions at source. Depending on what the measurements show, that might be changing cleaning products or methods, improving matting, or treating the surface to improve its grip. In many cases, a floor can be treated to raise its slip resistance without being replaced.
Advocate: get buy-in from cleaning contractors, operations teams and site staff, so the right standards hold in practice and not just on paper.
Assure: maintain grip through the right cleaning approach and planned re-testing. Surfaces wear quickly under heavy footfall, and contractors change.
Affirm: prove the result with dated data.
Slip Safety Services has found that organisations following this approach see a 57%+ average reduction in slip incidents. The improvement comes from addressing real causes in the right places, rather than adding more of the same activity.
This is where the old belief gives way to a better one. The question is not how often the floor is cleaned. It is whether the floor, the product and the method are right for each other.
What good looks like
A Facilities Manager managing airport slip risk well knows which zones in each terminal carry the highest risk and has recent, dated PTV readings for them, wet and dry. Cleaning products and methods are chosen for each type of flooring, and contractors are held to the same standard across the estate.
Entrance matting is checked for size, condition and coverage. Where a floor tests poorly, the response is to find the cause and fix it, not to add another clean to the schedule. Near misses are treated as useful data. When someone asks how safe a particular area is, there is a measured answer, not a reference to how often it is cleaned.
The takeaway
Cleaning more does not automatically mean a safer floor. The belief worth carrying forward is simple: the right floor, with the right care, proven by measurement, does more for airport slip risk than any increase in cleaning frequency.
Next step
If you are not sure whether your terminal floors are being kept safe by cleaning or only look that way, the Slip Prevention Scorecard takes a few minutes and gives you a clear starting point. For the fuller method behind measuring, improving and proving floor grip, Slipology by Christian Harris covers the process in depth.
FAQ
Does cleaning airport floors more often reduce slips?
Not necessarily. Cleaning removes contamination, but it does not restore the grip of a worn surface, and the wrong product or method can leave a residue that makes a floor more slippery. The right care, matched to the floor and checked by measurement, matters more than frequency alone.
Why are airport floors so slippery when wet?
Terminals often have large areas of smooth, hard flooring, and water forms a thin film between shoe and surface that reduces friction. Heavy footfall also wears floors smooth over time. Wet weather brings moisture in constantly, which makes the effect worse.
What is a safe slip resistance level for an airport terminal floor?
A Pendulum Test Value (PTV) of 36 or above when wet is generally regarded as low slip potential, based on HSE guidance. Below that, risk rises as the number falls. The reading should be taken for the specific zone, wet as well as dry.
Which areas of an airport carry the highest slip risk?
Entrances, arrival routes and baggage reclaim, areas near food and drink outlets, toilets and transitions between flooring types usually carry the most risk. These are the places most likely to be wet or contaminated, and they see heavy footfall. Quiet, dry areas typically need less attention.
How do I know if my cleaning is lowering the grip of the floor?
Measure the slip resistance of the floor with pendulum testing, wet and dry, and compare it before and after changes to products, methods or contractors. If readings fall, or a zone still tests poorly after a thorough clean, the cleaning approach or the surface needs attention.