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OCR for page 59
Airport Systems 59
An airport that does not have the budget to replace all the legacy systems should consider an over-
arching system, such as a data hub that receives only the pertinent data that decisionmakers need.
This type of hub does not interfere with the needs and requirements of a functional area system.
Rather it allows those systems to remain untouched, but pulls out of the system only the data rele-
vant to the hub. The hub transmits that business-critical data to the senior managers' dashboards.
For example, there might be 15 or more systems that house the different data necessary to cal-
culate airlines' full rates and charges in compliance with the rate-making methodology employed
at an airport. However, gathering bits of data from each of these systems can give the data needed
to calculate the metrics for senior management, so only that data needs to be pulled into the hub.
In other words, do not attempt to integrate everything in those 15 or more systems; there is no
need to do so.
Data Rules
The steps in Chapter 3 discuss the business and data rules. Identifying how those data rules
apply to the systems and how the rules are handled within the system are equal in importance.
When using the central data hub approach, it is useful to also identify how the hub handles the
rules and whether or not the rules can be set by airport decisionmakers.
Disparate Data Sources
Establishing the proper data rules--by defining and understanding the data from all parties
and how information is used within the different divisions of an airport--is pivotal to success-
fully integrate the various sources of flight data. This section provides an example of the discrep-
ancies among the following different sources of flight information:
· Official Airline Guide,
· Airline Direct Feed,
· FAA Direct Feed, and
· Flight Information Display System.
Official Airline Guide
This service is updated every 30 days using a format called a Standard Schedules Information
Manual (SSIM) file. (The SSIM file guide and formatting requirements document can be obtained
directly from the OAG.) If the flight schedule changes within the 30-day period prior to a depar-
ture or arrival, flights might not be updated by the OAG downloads into FIDS. Even if an airport
has paid for an additional subscription service provided by the OAG for continuous updates of the
flights, an airline's flight information is only as good as the last time that airline updated the data.
The process relies heavily on each airline sending updates to OAG for each changed flight, and most
airlines do not use a direct feed from their system into the OAG system. Therefore, airlines that do
not update the data until the day of departure might bypass the OAG entirely.
Airline Direct Feed
Airlines and airports are working together to help bridge some of the information gap between
them. In some cases, participating airlines can provide direct feeds to airports by using XML
technology to integrate flight data. The data generated by these feeds comes from the airline's
flight center. Airlines typically maintain two systems to manage flights--one that the public
(including airports) is allowed to see and another that is real-time operations data controlled by
the airline's dispatch center.
