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Located in the southwestern corner of Arizona, Yuma International Airport is owned by Yuma County, Arizona, and managed and operated by the Yuma County Airport Authority, Inc. Last year, 64,000 people boarded planes at Yuma International, and more than 62,000 flew into the airport. It hosts two commercial airlines - US Airways and United - providing service to Los Angeles International Airport, Phoenix Sky Harbor and Las Vegas McCarran International Airport. In December, Delta Airlines will launch service out of Yuma with two non-stop flights a day to Salt Lake City, Utah. While not a major airline hub, Yuma International is nevertheless bustling.
When, in 2004, the FAA issued a rule that revised the Federal airport certification regulation [Title 14, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 139 (14 CFR Part 139] and established new certification requirements for airports such as Yuma International, the airport's operation team was put on red alert. By this regulation, Yuma International was now required to have physical or electronic control over every entry point into the airport. The team had their work cut out for them.
Because of this new regulation, and for the sake of more efficient operations and passenger safety, the time had come to upgrade the security infrastructure of the 600-acre facility. The airport's existing access control system was failing. It consisted of a dated closed-circuit television monitoring and an even older card access system. The exterior vehicle gates were two miles from the airport terminal, and security updates had to be performed manually.
To help determine the best way of achieving the most cost-effective - but highly secure - access control system, the operations team at Yuma International turned to Tatus Systems in Las Vegas, Nevada. Tatus designs, engineers, manages, and deploys security and fire systems including intrusion detection, closed circuit television, access control and data acquisition. Tatus was the first company in the world to deploy a real-time wireless access control system at Palomar Airport in Carlsbad, California. Yuma International Airport was in good hands.
Brian Thompson, Operations Manager at Yuma Airport, conferred with other airports about how best to undertake the daunting upgrade to his system. "The biggest challenge was the distance involved", said Thompson. "There are two miles between the most remote airfield access point and the operations control center. That's a lot of ground to cover".
A wired system would have required trenching the airport to lay fiber optic cable. The associated costs and disruption to airport operations - digging up miles of runways and taxiways-would have resulted in huge interference in the busy airport schedule. Those considerations, in addition to the extra time it would have taken to deploy an in-ground solution, made a wired system prohibitive.
"It was a no brainer", said Terry McLendon of Tatus Systems. "Wireless is the way to go and Firetide is the best solution. Firetide video and data qualities are the best on the market for remote video surveillance and access control applications".
Yuma International Airport personnel can now update access privileges remotely, without the need to drive to the gates. The new system also supports a surveillance camera system that allows Yuma to monitor the activities of people and vehicles entering and leaving the airport.
On November 30, 2006, the three-month project was completed, and Yuma International Airport unveiled its new, upgraded access control system. The installation includes Firetide HotPort® outdoor mesh nodes and Vicon Industries cameras. The wireless mesh network is connected to a dedicated security network monitored by airport security.
According to Brian Thompson, "Cost-effectiveness and ease of installation of the Firetide wireless system are huge benefits for busy airports that don't have time or money to spare".
According to its new mission statement adopted in June, 2007, Yuma International promises "to provide a safe, efficient, and customer-focused airport to serve Greater Yuma". Its stated vision is to "serve as the aviation hub for the Southwest Desert Triangle providing the highest levels of service to our customers".
Yet, before the current Firetide wireless mesh network was deployed at the Yuma airport, this mission had been challenging to execute. Now, the upgraded system provides a level of strength and integrity to airport operations and passenger safety that could not have been achieved before.
"Yuma International Airport operations always did a good job at security and ran a tight ship", said Terry McLendon. "We just gave them a better tool to lock down the airport the way it needs to be done now. It brought them from the 1980s into the 21st century".