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F E A T U R E

First-Class IT Service

April 17, 2003
By Jonathan Feldman

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	In this article
	Introduction
	Keeping Busy
	KISS, McCarran Style
	Attitude Is Everything

Maintaining top-notch customer and tenant service is high on the agenda at McCarran International Airport. From an IT standpoint, then, it's no surprise that one of McCarran's killer applications provides a means to this end by enabling more efficient use of existing facilities.

The common-use terminal equipment (CUTE) system, based on Arinc's iMuse/NT system, quickly provisions facilities to be used by any CUTE-compliant airline. For example, gates and check-in counters that used to be Delta-only can now be used by Delta, United Airlines or any other participating carrier at a moment's notice.

Of course, any IT system that has such a profound effect on so many customers--2,710,352 passengers passed through the Las Vegas airport in February 2003 alone--had better be reliable.

Tough Sell

The CUTE system and its cousins FIDS (flight information display system), LDCS (local departure control system) and the soon-to-be-born--and renamed--CUSS (common-use self-service) systems are some of McCarran's most critical applications. They require not only good application functionality but service guarantees and redundancy at the system and infrastructure level.

That's a tall order, one that made airlines skeptical at first. But McCarran's vision prevailed, and today, all but one tenant carrier have joined the collective (for more on the benefits of CUTE and how McCarran won over the airlines see "Air Power," page 32).

IT Powered Convenience

McCarran will soon let travelers get a boarding pass and check in luggage at their hotels, before they leave for the airport. The self-service systems are the same as the Windows 2000 self-service terminals in the airport, only they're connected to the airport over a WAN circuit.

Indeed, McCarran's IT department and its leaders face the typical technological challenges--staying current on hardware and other infrastructure, providing good customer service, maintaining a helpdesk, justifying purchases and keeping up with staff professional development. They also have to work closely with the federal government's TSA (Transportation Security Authority), which hasn't exactly been a smooth ride.

Gerard Hughes, senior network analyst in charge of infrastructure at McCarran, says, "We've had to teach them [the feds] how we do business here. That's been a process for us." In fact, McCarran did have an incident with the TSA over closet infrastructure, but after some tough meetings, lines of communications have been established, which has helped to prevent further conflict.