Helping hand

Dave Poltarak, managing director and vice president of IT solutions provider ARINC.

How are new IT systems contributing to airport development in the Middle East?

We are working on three major airport expansion projects in Dubai, Cairo, and Doha. In each we'll be installing our most recent technologies, such as check-in systems and common-use self service (CUSS) systems.

For the first time in Dubai International Airport, we are supplying our next-generation resource management tool, AirPlan. This tool allows the airport operator to plan the hub's operations and gate allocations.

It also enables them to decide how to deploy people to the gates and organise baggage carts. In airports, things rarely go to plan all the time, so this tool helps management re-plan when unexpected things occur.

For the AirPlan system, we have invested a large amount of money. It is based on a previous generation tool called GateFlow that allows an airport manager to assign aircraft to the most logical gates and stands, and anticipate and prevent aircraft congestion.

We are running it for the first time in Dubai's new terminal. As you can imagine, the hub's authorities are about to double the size of the terminal and the concourse area, so having a tool that helps them handle many more gates is going to be a useful resource.

In terms of testing the system at Dubai airport, it is already installed and has undergone trials and training with the hub. During the next three months, we'll go through final acceptance tests and an initial proving period. The plan is to exercise it as much as possible before the day comes when the airport's management wants to flip the switch.

As for Doha airport, the hub won't open for another couple of years so the designs that we are delivering have to reflect the next-generation of technology. We don't want to commit to delivering a 2008 product in 2010.

The design work we are doing right now will be flexible enough to allow for a 2010 product. This doesn't necessarily mean Doha's airport technology will be better than Dubai. I expect Dubai airport to continue with whatever is best.

Dubai airport's plan to open gates in stages, and not all at once like Heathrow's T5, is an idea we're comfortable with. The harder challenge for us is likely to be if we have to go with the big bang approach, so we are preparing ourselves to go with what might be the most difficult scenario.

If this is done in chunks or stages we are able to accommodate that as well.If things don't go to plan, then the airport authorities will need to have measures in place.

If an aircraft is late arriving and the airport can't leave the gate unoccupied, they'll have to move other aircraft into those gates and start accommodating for the change in operation. The region is tight on space at the moment, so the airport authorities in this region can't afford for any resources to go unused.

If you have a fixed plan then you'll end up with unused capacity, but if you have a tool and a strategy it allows you to be flexible. AirPlan takes advantage of every bit of capacity available.

The tool can cope with unusual events and with it we have helped develop one of the busiest airports in the world.

For ARINC, the biggest challenge is not so much taking what we have and delivering it but finding our feet. There are such a large number of gates and we are delivering 8000-10,000 devices from flight information display screens to public announcement speakers, as well as the software that drives these physical devices.

Getting these delivered and installed in a short period of time has been challenging. While the construction has been going on we have been figuring out the logistics and rapidly deploying thousands of devices.

Having time constraints to carry out our work in Dubai can be challenging but it has made things exciting. It's difficult but everyone in the team recognises this is a pretty unique opportunity in the world, not just the region. We wouldn't wish it any other way; it's big and this is an educated, demanding customer. All of these factors keep us on our toes.

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