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JackPot
McCarran pulls in about $40 million per year in slot machine revenue. All that money goes to capital projects, such as new buildings. This frees up funds for other, nonbuilding projects. In fact, much of the airport's IT infrastructure can be traced back to gambling revenue.
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CUTE Import
CUTE is the norm in Europe and Asia because the governments that run the airports there require it. It's also common in the international terminals of U.S. airports, simply because no single airline runs enough overseas flights to justify dedicated gates.
U.S. carriers generally have been reluctant to use CUTE because they like the status quo's branding advantages: When an airline has a whole terminal to itself, it can control the look of the entire facility, from the logos at the gates to the color of the wall treatments. The terminal is one big advertisement.
Now, Arinc and SITA, the two biggest sellers of CUTE systems, connect CUTE to the background signage at ticket counters, gates and baggage carousels, giving airlines more branding options. When an American Airlines employee logs onto CUTE, American's logo pops up on a monitor behind the desk. American can even add its own animation. Arinc is McCarran's vendor and integrator for CUTE.
At McCarran, the transfer of gates from one airline to another is seamless. Once the signage changes to, say, Continental, you can't tell that American ran flights out of the same gate an hour earlier, says Dick Marchi, senior vice president for technical and environmental affairs at Airports Council International (ACI), an airport trade association.
