Today, each airline operating at McCarran uses a separate bag-tracking system. Some use barcodes, and others use an entirely manual tracking procedure.
Because RFID provides a nearly real-time view of where bags are in the system, it also simplifies the rerouting of bags when flights are delayed or other exceptions occur, Marchi says. He expects RFID baggage systems to take hold more quickly in Europe and Asia than in the United States, largely because overseas airports generally control the information systems on behalf of their airline tenants, much like McCarran does in Las Vegas. Even so, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines are both said to be looking closely at RFID technology for use in airports where they control their own IT systems, Marchi says.
Airport operators are no doubt looking forward to the day when all airports use RFID. When that happens, a bag could be tracked across its entire journey, from drop-off to transfer to pickup. But it could take 20 years for RFID to reach that critical mass.
In September, the airport completed a three-month, three-stage upgrade to a Gigabit Ethernet network. First, the airport's administrative office systems, including e-mail, were migrated to the network. Then came the operational systems, such as reservations, flight displays and check-in kiosks, followed by the links that connect the airlines' host mainframe systems to the airport network.
About 12 hours after the second phase was completed in September, network utilization dropped from 35 percent to 9 percent. The extra capacity gives McCarran the headroom to add a variety of multimedia applications--most important, a new video surveillance system. The TSA initially wanted to run video surveillance over a separate network operated by the feds, but McCarran managed to convince the agency that it could run over the existing airport network.
The network upgrade was vital. Even before those applications are deployed, the added network speed--from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps--is already helping flight attendants board passengers and IT staffers do remote administration on computer equipment much faster, says David Bourgon, the airport's manager of airline systems.
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