Chicago O'Hare and Las Vegas International

On the final day of the 2004 Computer Electronics Show (CES), officials at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas were confronted with a crisis that graphically illustrated the logistical problems now facing many airports. Most of the 130,000 CES attendees tried to leave Las Vegas on January 11 2004, resulting in security queues of more than three hours and many people missing their flights home. Passengers were outraged, threatening never to come back to the show, and the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority was forced to make a formal apology. Testifying before the House Aviation Subcommittee in February 2004, Las Vegas officials warned that immediate steps needed to be taken to prevent not only a future loss in convention business, but also a potential loss of life. "The return of the long lines is a cause of frustration for the Las Vegas air traveller," said Randall Walker, director of the department of aviation in Clark County, Nevada. "If the situation does not improve, many of our visitors may be discouraged from returning to our community. This would be bad for the economic wellbeing of our community and for the airlines as well. But perhaps of equal concern is the unintended security consequence of these long lines: creating an attractive target in front of the checkpoint lanes for someone looking for an opportunity to inflict catastrophic injury on a large number of people." What was clear to Walker and many others in Las Vegas was that unless something was done about the extended backlogs forming at McCarran, the 2004 CES experience was not going to be an isolated incident. With a booming tourism business in the fastest growing major city in the country, McCarran was the first US airport to see visitor totals surpass September 11 levels. McCarran is expected to have moved about 40 million passengers in 2004, making it the nation's second largest airport for origination and destination traffic. It is hoped that a series of new technologies will help speed up check-in and reduce delays at McCarran; meanwhile, officials in airports around the country are keeping a close eye on progress in Las Vegas before deciding whether they too should deploy such technology. Since October 2003, McCarran passengers have been able to obtain boarding passes using SpeedCheck, a group of self-service kiosks owned by the airport. Unlike most self-service machines owned by individual airlines, these kiosks are shared among at least 14 commercial airlines - joined most recently by American Airlines and JetBlue Airways. McCarran initially deployed 30 of the machines in its Terminal 1, plus another six at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which allows passengers to obtain boarding passes before they leave for the airport. Through the first half of 2004, more than 675,000 passengers checked in through the kiosks; however, the machines were only available to passengers with hand-luggage. From this April, the machines will be able to read baggage tags, allowing passengers who are checking in luggage to use them. John Dungan, global product manager for airport systems at ARINC, the firm that built the SpeedCheck machines with IBM, says in the future, more and more check-in functions will be moved away from the airport. "Let's say on the last day of your trip you check out of a hotel and have one meeting in the morning before your afternoon flight," says Dungan. "What do you do with the bag?" Using this new technology, passengers will be able to hand over checked-in bags to hotel or convention centre staff. McCarran airport is in talks to hire an outside firm that will collect bags from local hotels and the convention centre and transfer them to the airport, where they will be screened and transferred to individual airlines. McCarran is also the first airport to deploy radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on a large scale to keep track of bags. When attached to checked-in luggage, the tags emit a signal that allows airport security officials to track the movement of bags during security screening, and to forward them to the individual airlines before departure. The tags contain a great deal of biometric information and emit more accurate signals than bar codes, which will make them far less likely to lose track of luggage. Another benefit of the RFID tags is that they allow much faster baggage screening that requires much less manual labour, officials say. McCarran, Jacksonville International Airport in Florida and other airports have already started removing explosive-detection devices from public areas and putting them into secure areas, freeing up space for passenger check-in. Under this system, all bags are screened for explosives on an automated conveyor belt system, and if there are any suspicious devices or substances found inside checked luggage, the bag is removed from the conveyor system and manually searched by security personnel. While the RFID tags and SpeedCheck machines will help to automate check-in, there are still lingering concerns about long security screening queues. In his February 2004 testimony, Walker noted that many visitors to Las Vegas were confused about how they should prepare for airport screening. "Since the rules change from airport to airport, many passengers wait until they are told what to do before making final preparations to enter the screening process," Walker said. In preparation for the 2004 presidential election, and following the publication of the 9/11 report, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) made several additional changes to airport screening procedures, requiring the removal of jackets and giving airport screeners more authority to subject passengers to additional scrutiny. In October 2004, the TSA, the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority and McCarran unveiled the nation's first TIPS programme - a new electronic messaging system using 25 prominent video monitors that tell passengers how best to prepare for airport screening. Some of these technologies are being deployed in other airports already, and their success at McCarran may dictate how widespread they become.

Chicago O'Hare

Congestion may be slowing down passenger traffic inside McCarran airport, but at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago it is slowing down air traffic. The congested airspace around O'Hare has been so severe that delays have rippled throughout the entire nation. After an unprecedented intervention by Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, American Airlines and United Airlines agreed to cut 37 flights in their peak-hour flights for six months, beginning in November 2004. Federal officials said the 5% reduction would reduce delays at the airport by about 20%. "There's no question that the Chicago area is a very significant part of our system, with the need to increase capacity," Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) administrator Marian Blakey said in an interview. She said the negotiated flight reductions at O'Hare were temporary solutions, and that the FAA was examining several other means of reducing delays in the Chicago area, including the increased use of alternative airports in surrounding cities. Many business travellers who fly through O'Hare say the delays have been so bad there that they often try to avoid using the airport. For the first nine months of 2004, O'Hare ranked last in the country for on-time arrivals and departures, according to the FAA. "Chicago is horrible," says David Chestler, vice president of global sales at Pegasus Solutions, a Dallas-based provider of hotel reservations systems. "I rue the day when I have to fly there." Chestler, an elite frequent flyer with American Airlines, says he tries to fly into Midway International Airport. Unlike Chestler, many travellers cannot avoid flying through O'Hare, because it is the largest connecting airport in the US. American and United, the world's two largest airlines, together control about 86% of the flight capacity at O'Hare, and many of those flights are feeder services to small cities and towns throughout the Midwest. The airspace over Chicago has been near capacity for many years, finding only temporary reductions following the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. United and American, which both operate major hub operations at O'Hare, have replaced much of their wide-body capacity at O'Hare with regional jets that can be operated with smaller flight crews and less fuel, but which also take fewer passengers. John Roberson, commissioner of aviation for Chicago, says the legacy carriers have been forced to do so in order to compete with low-cost carriers like Southwest, which has a major presence at Midway International Airport. "Legacy carriers are simply not getting the yield they used to [on point to point]. We as airport operators and the FAA have to deal with this changing industry." Midway International Airport in Chicago offers an alternative to flying out of O'Hare, but has much less connecting traffic and is located within the city limits, therefore limiting its capacity for expansion. Midway is the preferred airport for many discount airlines, including Southwest and ATA, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2004. Another factor in the increased flight congestion was the sudden closure of Meigs Field, a general aviation facility located in Chicago. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley had long sought to turn the airport into a nature preserve. In March 2003, citing safety concerns, construction crews were sent into the airport on a weekend night to demolish the runway. The previous year, Meigs reported 32,000 take-offs and landing. Many of those passengers have subsequently switched to Midway and O'Hare. Since the closure of Meigs, passenger traffic at both O'Hare and Midway has continued to rise towards levels not seen since September 11 and, prior to that event, Chicago was the scene of some of the nation's worst air traffic delays, due to weather and labour strife between United and its unionised pilots. While unionised workers are no longer creating delays for the airline, the airport has been choked by the increased number of small jets and a failure to upgrade facilities that could help pilots land in bad weather. "The problem at O'Hare is not over scheduling," says aviation analyst Michael Boyd. ?The problem  is that the FAA has a programme that has not been upgraded properly. Boyd argues that there are existing technologies - such as the use of satellites - that could increase capacity by 30% at O'Hare, by allowing pilots to take off and land in bad weather. He says the airport is suffering needlessly because the FAA has been slow to take action, and is now trying to pass the buck by ordering airlines to reduce flights. All parties acknowledge that even if airlines at O'Hare cut flights and new satellite systems are utilised, these are short-term solutions. Therefore, the debate is once again raging over whether Chicago needs a third major airport, or whether a full-scale modernisation of O'Hare airport can repair the damage. "Everybody realises it needs to happen, but it's the not-in-my-backyard syndrome," says Ed Czepiel, associate director for research at Northwestern University's Transportation Center, in Evanston, Illinois. "The opposition is amazingly well co-ordinated." There are two major proposals on the table to expand capacity in the Chicago area. Mayor Richard Daley supports a $15 billion plan that would expand the number of parallel runways at O'Hare from two to six and create a new western terminal building at the airport by 2013. The Chicago Department of Aviation estimates the project would allow O'Hare to handle 1.6 million flights per year, compared with about 975,000 flights currently. Officials at United Airlines, which is based at O'Hare, say the carrier is pushing the FAA to approve new taxi procedures and flight patterns that will relieve some short-term pressure on the local airspace, but they believe that the expansion plan is the best option. "There's a limited number of flights you can fly out of that airport," said Martin White, senior vice president of marketing at United. "The modernisation plan is the right answer." While most experts believe an expansion at O'Hare would help reduce delays and accelerate economic growth, there is fierce opposition from residents of several wealthy communities that surround the O'Hare airport complex. Critics say the proposed expansion would require hundreds of homes and businesses to be demolished, that the expansion would increase noise pollution in the area, and that it would pose a potential safety hazard due to the increased number of landings and take-offs at the facility. Another proposal is to create a third airport in Peotone, Illinois, 40 miles south of Chicago. Critics argue the location is too far south to attract a large number of people from Chicago's North Side and northern suburbs, where most of its businesses and wealthier residents live. United says a third airport is not the answer. What is clear is that a solution is needed, and soon.