Big is beautiful

This summer Egypt’s national airports operator took formal delivery of the new Terminal 3 at Cairo International. Like so many of the facilities recently introduced across the Middle East and North Africa, it’s on the grand scale – as large as its two predecessors combined, with a maximum annual capacity of 14 million passengers – and beautifully styled inside and out.
If anything, the technology that lies beneath the terminal’s gleaming exterior is even more impressive. “We delivered, installed and integrated 14 different information-handling systems,” said Paul Hickox, ARINC’s regional director for the Middle East. “They form one of the most diverse and wide-ranging capabilities we have ever supplied anywhere in the world. It’s a very significant project for us as an airport master systems integrator.”
Built over a five-year period, the $400 million terminal features two piers housing a total of 23 gates, two of which can handle the Airbus A380. Concourses connect the piers to the main building, with its 110 check-in desks, seven baggage carousels and total of 54 passport control desks for outgoing and incoming travellers.
Biometric border control from Sagem Sécurité of France is one of the 14 capabilities integrated by ARINC Managed Services under a $27 million contract awarded in 2006. Sagem’s Biometric Immigration Gate (BIG) system is the first to be implemented in Egypt. Other innovations include the world’s first operational application of a context-aware wireless network and hand-held devices to give ground staff need-to-know access to ramp management information, and the Middle East’s first common-use self-service (CUSS) check-in kiosks.
Long-established ARINC products deployed at the new terminal include the iMUSE common-use system for check-in desks, the IP-based AirVUE flight information display, AirDB airport operational database, AirPlan resource management system, and passenger information kiosks. ARINC also supplied the connectivity – local-area networks and voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony – that underpins these systems.

Intent on avoiding problems like those that marred the opening of London Heathrow’s Terminal 5, ARINC and the Cairo Airport Company orchestrated a seven-month ramp-up leading to full operations. Following a symbolic inauguration attended by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak last December, Cairo T3 opened for commercial operations at the end of April, when national carrier Egyptair moved in and carried out the first flight, to New York JFK.
The following two weeks saw the terminal running at an initial capacity of five flights a day, and by the end of the first month of operations some 111,000 passengers had passed through. Egyptair’s international services were cut over at the end of May, the carrier’s Star Alliance partners moved in during June, and final proving of all the ARINC-supplied systems was completed in August. Terminal 3 is now home to 27 international and domestic airlines carrying 11,000 passengers a day on some 200 scheduled flights.
“Full service was reached about a year-and-a-half later than the original timetable,” reported Hickox. “Though our part of the the project came in on budget, entry into service was delayed because the customer wanted to get the opening right and not have any repeat of the Heathrow T5 fun and games. Having a terminal that was right first time really mattered to them.”
And that’s what has been achieved, Hickox maintains. “Just as we did at Dubai Terminal 3 last year, we opened in Cairo without a single hiccup or failure,” he said. “Final proving was completed on August 20 and the terminal is now running at full capacity. We’re supplying the customer with two years of maintenance and support, and keeping on-site teams in place to ensure they enjoy the best possible service.”
Many observers see the biometric immigration gates, with their ability to allow qualified passengers to enter Egypt with minimum delay, as the most state-of-the-art aspect of the new terminal. But it is another capability, the context-aware ramp management system supplied by ARINC in partnership with Franco-Swedish software provider Appear Networks, that places Cairo Terminal 3 at the very forefront of airport technology.

Appear’s IQ back-end wireless platform and click & run software for hand-held devices support what the company describes as “context-aware service discovery” – short-range wireless delivery of selected information to mobile workers, depending on their location, personal profile and pre-set permissions. Applications include passenger and flight information, catering orders, security, and maintenance management. Appear Networks has a number of proof-of-concept activities under way in Europe and the Far East, but Cairo Terminal 3 is its first fully operational implementation.

Combined with its recent track record at Cairo, Dubai and the ongoing Doha International, ARINC’s ability to furnish such leading-edge capabilities leaves the company well placed to contest several other airport projects that are now out to tender in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. “We are bidding on Egypt’s next big project, covering another nine airports in the country, including Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh,” admitted Hickox. “We’re offering systems similar to those deployed in Cairo Terminal 3, and we’re very optimistic about our prospects.”
Elsewhere, ARINC’s hat is in the ring for the temporary terminal at the Dubai World Central site at Jebel Ali and for Muscat and Salalah in Oman. And the company is primed for action when the request for tenders for Abu Dhabi’s Midfield Terminal is issued next year or early in 2011. In the meantime, work continues on the new Doha International, where ARINC is installing and integrating across no fewer than 87 buildings under a contract worth $100 million.
“The requirement at Jebel Ali is for a temporary facility to serve the initial two runways,” said Hickox. “Capacity will start at three million passengers a year, growing eventually to a maximum of 10 million. Tenders have been requested and that aspect at least of Dubai World Central seems to be full steam ahead.”
The same is true of airport activity across the region. “Projects continue to emerge as a result of continuing growth in the Gulf States and North Africa,” Hickox said. “Our success at Cairo gives us further confidence that we can tender and win our share of this business.”