This chapter provides background and context for the case study that is used for examples in Part II and Part III. The case study focuses on the transformation of a hypothetical airport in an alternative Southern California, as it grows from a civil aviation field to an alternative airport to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). For purposes of the case study, the details have been somewhat simplified, but there are references at the end of the chapter for those interested in further details and requirements for airports.

RMN Airport Today

Our hypothetical RMN Airport is strategically located in (an alternative) Southern California, south and east of LAX, surrounded by the hypothetical towns of Tornton, Brownsville, and Petersboro. The airport is near major freeways, but there is undeveloped land surrounding it, as shown in Figure 3-1.

Figure 3-1   Location of the airport

Like other airports in the United States, our RMN Airport is governed by a port authority. A port authority is a governmental commission empowered to manage or construct port facilities. In this case, the RMN Airport Authority is a separate governing agency created under a joint powers agreement from the three surrounding towns for the sole purpose of owning and operating the airport. The authority consists of nine commissioners, three from each city. Each city’s commissioners are appointed by the city council. The airport’s day-to-day operations are managed by an executive director selected by the commissioners.

Background

RMN Airport started life as a civil air patrol airport in World War II. After the war, it evolved into a regional civil aviation field. It was named after Richard M. Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, in the late 1960s through the efforts of a local congressman who was a loyal supporter of the Southern California native.

RMN Airport provides services for smaller private planes, including some small private jets, a small plane charter company, a flight training school, and the local civil air patrol. The airport has one runway, fueling facilities, aircraft parking space, some hanger and repair facilities, and an administration building that includes space for a crew and passenger lounge, space for the executive director’s office and (currently very limited) staff, and air traffic management facilities. There is a parking lot in front of the Administration Building for those working at or using the airport.

Opportunities and Aspirations

The Airport Authority has noted increasing opportunities for expansion of RMN Airport. With the increasing congestion at LAX and other Southern California airports, RMN Airport is beginning to get inquiries from intrastate commuter airlines and even some West Coast commuter airlines about the possibility of using it as one of their destinations for Southern California flights. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is interested in a strategic alternative to LAX that is very close and is viable in the event of LAX closure due to unforeseen events, so the FAA would be very supportive of expansion at RMN Airport.

The airport could stand to receive subsidies from the State of California as part of a state initiative to reduce congestion at LAX and incentivize smaller airports to offload the peak traffic over the skies of Los Angeles. These subsidies are offered on a sliding scale, with a large amount being available initially to jumpstart operations and tapering off over a 15-year period, with the assumption that the airport’s natural increase of revenues would be able to sustain operations after 15 years without the state subsidies. There is general agreement between the local municipalities as well as the nine-member board of commissioners that the expansion of RMN Airport would bring new jobs, new trade, new passenger traffic, and potentially a lot of beneficial effects on nearby farming communities in terms of eco-tourism and farm-to-table produce sales.

In light of this increasing evidence of opportunities for expansion, the Airport Authority has seriously begun to consider plans to transform RMN Airport into a full-service international airport so it can ultimately become a reliever airport (the FAA term) or viable passenger and cargo alternative to LAX. The commissioners also see opportunities to draw additional traffic from other Southern California airports such as Orange County, Burbank, and Ontario airports. The commissioners are looking at a 15-year growth plan to take advantage of aggressive subsidies from California while developing the 20-year master plan required to be filed with the FAA and updated regularly. The commissioners don’t want to count on state money, but they want to be in a position to compete for it, should the money become available.

Figure 3-2 shows a conceptual image of the airport, with the typical components divided into airside components and landside components. The airport is serviced by regional access roads and transit systems.

Figure 3-2   Conceptual image of RMN Airport

Challenges

Major transformations of any enterprise are always fraught with issues and risks. From a strategic viewpoint, the transformation of a small airport into a reliever airport for a major air traffic hub creates a number of new challenges related to dealing with external players in areas of environmental impact, energy footprint, neighborhood and local governments, federal regulators, transportation security, and others.

The transformation of the airport has additional challenges, because the airport needs to remain operational (and keep its existing revenue stream stable) during large-scale construction of runways and terminals. For example, the FAA has strict regulations on the size of runways needed to handle wide-body jets. If RMN Airport is to handle wide-body airliners and some of the larger cargo aircraft, its existing runway will have to be both widened and lengthened. Modifications to the runway cannot be undertaken without an additional runway to absorb the load while the construction operations are in process. Even with a new runway, the construction on the old runway will severely limit operations because the presence of construction equipment close to another operating runway needs close supervision and extra procedures for safety. In addition, funding a new runway is a serious financial investment and a serious risk if the planned-for air-traffic growth does not materialize as expected. All these issues mean that changes must be carefully coordinated throughout the entire transformation period. Figure 3-3 shows the factors and stakeholders that RMN must address if it is to grow into the role of a reliever airport for LAX.

Figure 3-3   Airport enterprise, stakeholders, and concerns

The subsections that follow provide a rough overview of at least some of the changes that need to be made to achieve RMN Airport’s transformation.

Regulations

As RMN Airport grows, it will have to conform to an increasing number of regulations that did not previously apply.

FAA Regulations

Civil aviation in the United States is federally regulated because of the safety issues, coordination and collaboration challenges that are posed to passengers, airline industry players, partners and the general public, and the use of shared resources such as the airspace over the United States. The FAA is responsible for managing traffic inside U.S. domestic airspace. The FAA has authority to promulgate and enforce a wide range of regulations on the airport. Some of these regulations restrict the scope and design/selection of the following:

• Runways   FAA regulates the width and length of runways needed to handle different classes of aircraft. The FAA has established standard categories for airports based on the types of aircraft they can handle.

• Airport equipment and instrumentation   The FAA has requirements on the system of weather and other sensing equipment along with automation and information requirements for the air traffic management operations, including tower operations, radio equipment for communications between aircraft and ground controllers, and terminal radios for gate personnel.

• Air traffic personnel   The FAA has requirements for skills, training, and certification of personnel involved in air traffic management.

• Airline staff and aircrew   The FAA has requirements for skills, training, certification, and experience maintenance of airline operations staff and aircrew.

In addition, the FAA has regulations on what airport planning documents must be developed and approved prior to changes at an airport.

Local Regulations

Any physical improvements to the airport must conform to local zoning, noise, and traffic regulations as well as local safety regulations.

Other Federal and State Regulations

The airport must conform to federal and state security, safety, and health regulations. The airport has to conform to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Transportation Security Agency (TSA) regulations for aviation security, such as rules for passenger, checked bag, and carry-on baggage screening; carriage of permissible items in checked baggage and luggage; and confiscation of banned items. Instead of part-time TSA agents or use of local law enforcement for occasional passenger screening, as it expands operations, the RMN Airport will need full-time TSA agents in growing numbers to staff the checkpoints that they must install.

In addition, as the airport staffs its expansion through contracts and outsourced deliverables, the airport must follow the Small Business Administration regulations for reserving a percentage of contracts for small minority- and woman-owned businesses. This regulation related to preference of small businesses for set-asides applies primarily to concession vendors’ contracts.

Stakeholders

As it grows, RMN Airport will need to interact with additional stakeholders and increased stakeholder presence at the airport. Increased presence means that space and facilities will need to be supplied. The increased workforce that will need access to RMN Airport facilities means that identifications of valid employees will be an issue. Badging with photos and biometrics, implementation of access controls to secured facilities, and tracking of movement within the sensitive areas of the airport will all have to be addressed. Some of the stakeholders include the following:

• TSA   Passenger and baggage screening, sky marshals

• United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)   Immigration screening of incoming foreign nationals

• United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP)   Customs processing and border controls enforcement of incoming passengers from foreign originating ports on first entry to the United States at RMN Airport

• U.S. Department of Agriculture – Agriculture Public Health Inspection Service (APHIS)   Screening of baggage for dairy, plants, and farm products

• U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)   Screening of passengers and baggage for illegal drugs

• Contractors   Vendors providing landside (terminal) passenger services

• Unions   Organized airport, contractor, and facility workers

• Airlines   Checking in passengers and managing local airline operations landside and airside through the airline operations centers

Larger Management Staff

As the RMN Airport grows, the executive director will need to enlarge his or her staff, possibly at each phase in the transformation process, as new functions and responsibilities are created that need to be staffed. The executive director will need deputies, including one general deputy and potentially multiple deputies for some specialized functions, such as finance administration, engineering, maintenance, operations, and airline relations. Eventually, a second level of management may be needed, such as directors for financial services, business, property, administrative services, public affairs, communications, human resources, information, communications technologies, operations, maintenance, and public safety. Positions for a chief of airport police and a chief of the airport fire department will also become necessary at some time as the scale of airport security and emergency operations demand dedicated staff.

More Functions, Facilities, and Capabilities

As RMN Airport transforms into a full-service international airport, it will need to support more functions and provide more facilities for those functions. In addition, new capabilities will need to be added.

Landside Functions and Facilities

Figure 3-4 illustrates some of the core functions that must be available and certified by the FAA before an airport requests a license to operate. Not all of these functions are the responsibility of the airport authority—some of them are the responsibility of other partners such as the airline, or the fixed base operator (FBO), or the specialized aviation service operator (SASO).

Figure 3-4   Airport terminal functions

Landside facilities include the terminal areas comprising gates, baggage stations, concourses, concessions, automobile parking, airline counters, airline operational centers, roads and public access, general aviation facilities, cargo facilities, passenger facilities, and major utilities. All these facilities will need to be scaled up as the airport transforms.

Airside Functions and Facilities

Figure 3-5 provides a summary of necessary airside functions.

Figure 3-5   Airside function summary

Airside facilities include landing areas such as runways and helipads; aircraft movement areas such as taxiways; aircraft parking areas such as aprons; aircraft and airside safety areas such as runway protection zones, runway and taxiway safety areas, runway and taxiway object-free zones, and runway obstacle-free zones.

Passenger Processing Capabilities

To be an attractive alternative to LAX, RMN will have to enhance its capabilities significantly for passenger management, passenger comfort, passenger convenience, and passenger safety from current levels.

• Passenger management   This includes processing passengers from point of check-in to the point of boarding the aircraft, or from debarking to collecting their baggage and being on their way to their final destination. Passengers may also use RMN Airport to connect to other flights. Passenger management includes completion of customs and immigration requirements, safety screening procedures, guided access through airport public areas, requirements for identification, and authorization to travel at all times at permitted locations of the airport.

• Passenger comfort   This involves providing environmental conditions for temperature control and management of passenger areas, adequate seating and resting facilities, provision of amenities such as clean restrooms, baby changing areas, potable water sources such as coolers in hallways, and fatigue-resistant flooring and moving areas such as elevators, escalators, and corridors.

• Passenger convenience   The provision of facilities inside the airport itself must be adequate for passengers’ travel and work-related needs. These can range from providing in-airport services for wireless Internet and e-mail connections; electrical outlets for passengers to recharge their electronics equipment; facsimile and printing services for business documents; and help desks with maps and personnel to assist passengers, to help locate and use rapid transit transport to downtown Los Angeles and other points through partnerships with local authorities and rapid transit organizations. Providing facilities for passenger baggage storage, in-airport post offices, and other conveniences are intended to make RMN Airport an inviting departure, destination, and transit hub for airlines and passengers alike.

• Passenger safety   Safety is a very important concern in the post 9/11 world. The fear of plane hijacking and terrorism has rippled through U.S. airports. The increased alert posture of airports has also affected RMN Airport. From the entrance ramps of the highway that provides access to the airport to an array of equipment used for baggage and passenger screening, RMN Airport is deeply committed to providing passenger safety by upgrading its facilities to overcome or mitigate known vulnerabilities. RMN is also concerned with privacy and antidiscrimination laws that prevent passenger profiling. Law enforcement capabilities for the airport’s security needs are provided by a detachment of local law enforcement precincts assigned to RMN Airport. Airport authorities, screeners, and other personnel involved in passenger screening and detection of explosives and lethal weapons in hand-carried and checked baggage refer cases of the violations of law to these local law enforcement authorities for apprehension and prosecution.

Another important part of passenger safety is the need for well-established personnel support, processes and services for evacuation, fire protection, medical care and triage services, ambulance services, sick bays, and other equipment needed to respond immediately and decisively to medical and other emergencies. Each of these services reaches back to the broader system of hospitals, firefighting forces, and other state, local, and county resources in the tri-city area around RMN Airport. Given its current limited financial capabilities, RMN Airport has a limited standing army of first responders. RMN Airport has established the principle of a minimum presence in first response, recognizing that its capabilities are also limited by the staff available. But RMN Airport has also stipulated that escalation of first response will be the preferred approach to handling emergencies. RMN Airport has routinely run drills and exercises to test the principle though no major event has occurred. Given the planned escalation of the size and capacity and scope of the airport, it is anticipated that some of the assumptions related to escalation may need to be revisited.

Cargo Processing Capabilities

In addition to the ability to manage passengers in a way that will attract travelers, RMN also needs capabilities to manage cargo operations in a way that will satisfy airlines and, by extension, their cargo shipping and receiving customers. These capabilities include the following:

• Cargo handling capabilities   These capabilities require acquisition and operation of equipment such as forklifts, pallets, containerized handling equipment, roll-on and roll-off containers, materials handling equipment, and so on.

• Cargo tracking capabilities   These capabilities require automated identification technologies such as radiofrequency ID (RFID) tagging and bar codes as well as a system of tracking that enables these identifiers to be captured at various points of the cargo processing cycle.

• Cargo inspection capability   This capability requires that various cargo items be checked against U.S. laws. These laws are enforced by various federal agencies. The Department of Agriculture and APHIS enforce laws that control importation of plant and animal products. The Department of Commerce enforces laws related to the International Arms Trade (ITARS). The Department of Customs and Border Protection enforces laws related to the assessment, charging, and collection of customs duty.

• Cargo storage and cargo management capabilities   These capabilities require space and segregated areas within the airport. For example, a bonded warehouse is required for customs-cleared cargo. A quarantine area is required when cargo suspected of containing harmful plant or animal material needs to be sequestered before being destroyed. Cargo storage also requires the need for security and fire protection forces.

• Hazardous material cargo (hazmat) handling capabilities   These capabilities require clear identification of hazardous materials and management of their storage to prevent potential CBRNE (chemical, biological, radiation, or nuclear explosion) events.

Cargo processing capabilities require space and facilities for cargo operations in addition to the passenger terminal operations. Although some of the capabilities needed to support cargo processing are the primary responsibility of the carriers, such as a package express company or the cargo operations arm of an airline, RMN Airport management and facilities need to be able to support cargo operations in a sustainable, safe, efficient, and effective manner. RMN Airport is a platform that enables cargo carrier operations in much the same way that it enables air transportation of passengers.

Information Technology Capabilities

To bring RMN Airport up to the standards of LAX and newer major airports, information technology features and functions will have to be included in each phase of the transformation. Here are examples of the types of technologies and capabilities that will be needed:

• Terminals need to be equipped with wireless hubs to enable passengers to connect to the Internet. Wireless access points, electric charging points, and desks and stations for laptops and notebooks need to be provided in the terminal areas for passengers.

• Surveillance capabilities need to be integrated into the digital infrastructure. Storage needs to be provided for the large amounts of surveillance data picked up by terminal- and cargo-area cameras. The capability to index and recall this data for forensic and operational analysis is also needed.

• Airport back-office operations need to be integrated into loosely coupled, service-oriented systems that are at once flexible and agile and that can support a variety of orchestrated functions. Service orientation, loose coupling, separation of concerns, and reusability are fundamental architecture principles that RMN Airport has selected for adoption based on the promise of being able to upgrade in a rapid and modular way, increasing scale and tempo of operations as the airport expands.

• The airport IT infrastructure needs to provide a backbone platform to run the various federal agency system components such as those required by Department of Agriculture APHIS; Customs and Border Protection; Department of Homeland Security/Transportation Security Administration systems for flight manifests, no-fly lists, name searches, and other security measures; and the FAA’s system of equipment and instrumentation.

• The airport needs to provide the technical capabilities of an enterprise service bus and an Internet transport layer as well as services for connectivity, data exchange, and a network of networks. These need to comply with existing and emerging standards within the aviation industry for internetworking computers; data exchange; data formats; and voice, data, and video networks.

• The airport will develop, implement, and use cloud-based services wherever possible to take advantage of scalability and demand elasticity and as a way to expense operations instead of investing in capital equipment.

• RMN Airport needs to allocate IT data centers at various strategic locations inside the airport perimeter, along with alternative sites for continuity of operations (COOP) support.

Continuous Interactions with Communities of Interest

As RMN Airport transforms and grows, RMN management will have to interact with federal, state, and local groups on a regular basis. Federal and state approvals will be necessary for the plans that the airport develops (see the upcoming section, “Plans”). The city councils of the surrounding three communities will also need to approve the airport’s plans and will need to be constantly updated on developments and issues. There will be many national, state, and local groups, such as environmental groups, business groups, and unions, that will want to be updated on the airport’s plans and will want to provide input. Local groups will be most focused on noise, traffic, and land acquisition topics. As the airport grows, the number of these groups will also grow.

Cultural Issues

A major cultural change at RMN Airport will be change from people-oriented operations to process-oriented operations. For a small airport, a combination of training and hiring the right people is sufficient to ensure that the right decisions will be made for smooth operations. However, as the airport grows and transforms to a vibrant aviation hub, the pace of operations will introduce a need for documented, enforced, and monitored processes to supplement the traditional human resource–based approach of hiring the right people. The transformation from people-oriented, relatively autonomous decision-making to a process-centric, command and control decision-making environment is a big change that may cause friction with longtime managers and employees. The addition of unionized workers introduces additional influences. Management will have to understand and manage these cultural issues.

Plans

The FAA recommends the development of an Airport Master Plan (AMP) to provide guidance for the evolution of an airport. Figure 3-6 provides an overview of the contents of the AMP and two related plans: the Airport Layout Plan and the Integrated Project Roadmap.

Figure 3-6   Overview of the Airport Master Plan

Following are the objectives of the AMP:

• Document the issues that the proposed development will address. (Note that an enterprise architecture will help identify issues.)

• Justify the proposed development through the technical, economic, and environmental investigation of concepts and alternatives. (An enterprise architecture can provide support for these justifications and the analyses that backs them up.)

• Provide an effective graphical presentation of the development of the airport and anticipated land uses in the vicinity of the airport. (An enterprise architecture can provide input to these graphical presentations.)

• Establish a realistic schedule for the implementation of the development proposed in the plan, particularly the short-term capital improvement program. (An enterprise architecture, in terms of phased to-be architectures, can provide details of all changes to be made for each step of the transformation.)

• Propose an achievable financial plan to support the implementation schedule. (An enterprise architecture, in terms of phased to-be architectures, can provide details of all changes to be made for each step of the transformation for the costing analysis.)

• Provide sufficient project definition and detail for subsequent environmental evaluations that may be required before the project is approved. (An enterprise architecture, in terms of phased to-be architectures with identified projects, can provide details of all changes to be addressed by each project.)

• Present a plan that adequately addresses the issues and satisfies local, state, and federal regulations. (An enterprise architecture can provide input to this analysis.)

• Document policies and future aeronautical demand to support municipal or local deliberations on spending, debt, land use controls, and other policies necessary to preserve the integrity of the airport and its surroundings.

• Set the stage and establish the framework for a continuing planning process. Such a process should monitor key conditions and permit changes in plan recommendations as required. (An enterprise architecture should be a key part of the enterprise planning process.)

RMN Airport management has prepared an AMP for the transformation of the airport but has focused on a 15-year view for this version of the plan, versus the 20-year time frame suggested by the FAA. RMN management will update the AMP every 5 years during the 15-year time frame of this plan.

From an enterprise architecture viewpoint, the AMP outline requires much of the same content as an enterprise architecture:

• Defines the vision and incremental steps with explicit annual progress measures—a target architecture, phasing architectures, and strategic viewpoint

• Describes the existing airport inventory—an as-is architecture

• Describes facility requirements, provides development alternatives, and describes the capital improvement program—other parts to the to-be architectures

The AMP requires aviation activity forecast and demand/capacity analysis, which would be needed as input to to-be architectures. However, the AMP wants narrative descriptions, whereas an enterprise architecture provides specific views and mathematical models, many of which are graphical in nature. The more detailed and structured views of the enterprise architecture can be used to support the required analyses required by the AMP.

Elements of the AMP and its two associated plans will need approval by the commissioners, the city councils of the three surrounding communities, and the FAA. Other approvals may be needed from the State of California Department of Transportation, the Environment Protection Agency, or local environmental organizations.

Summary

The transformation of RMN Airport from a civil aviation field to a reliever airport for LAX will involve several phases and take at least 15 years. We have provided a brief overview of some of the challenging changes that must be accomplished in this transformation. The “References” section provides more information for anyone interested in airport regulations and requirements.

The chapters of Part II and Part III of this book will make reference to this case study in examples, especially in the example DoDAF views in Part III. Most of these examples focus on an enterprise-level architecture for RMN Airport with strategic and project viewpoints, a segment-level architecture for a passenger management segment as the airport starts to handle international passengers, and a solution-level architecture for passenger identification technology upgrades that are part of the passenger management segment.

References

Federal Aviation Administration. 1988. Advisory Circular No 150/5360-13, Change 1. “Planning and Design Guidelines for Airport Terminal Facilities.” www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/advisory_circulars/index.cfm/go/document.information/documentID/22618.

Federal Aviation Administration. 2014. Advisory Circular No 150/5300-13A, Change 1. “Airport Design.” www.faa.gov/airports/resources/advisory_circulars/index.cfm/go/document.current/documentNumber/150_5300-13.

Federal Aviation Administration. 2015. Advisory Circular No 150/5070-6B, Change 2. “Airport Master Plans.” www.faa.gov/airports/resources/advisory_circulars/index.cfm/go/document.current/documentNumber/150_5070-6.

Federal Aviation Administration. 2015. Advisory Circular No 150/5070-7, Change 1. “The Airport System Planning Process.” www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/150-5070-7-change1.pdf.

Federal Aviation Administration. 2016. “Airport Categories.” www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/passenger_allcargo_stats/categories/.

McKinney National Airport Master Plan, FAQ. nd. http://mckinney.airportstudy.com/files/FAQs-for-Study-Website1.pdf.