American Airlines has opened a $10 million nerve center at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport designed to improve efficiency by consolidating several functions formerly housed in different parts of the airport.
I got a sneak peek and an exclusive tour Friday from Matt Eggers, managing director of what Fort Worth-based American (Nasdaq: AAL) calls its DFW Hub Control Center. The center will be officially unveiled with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and tours on Wednesday.
"It allows us to bring everybody that has anything to do with operational efficiency or effectiveness under one roof," Eggers told me on the tour. "Not only does it promote better communication, but it also allows employees who have just talked on the phone over time to talk to each other, and they know who"™s who in the organization."
The new control center is 10,000 square feet, compared to 1,500 square feet previously. The new facility is on the second floor of Terminal A, rather than on the 10th floor of an aging ramp control tower previously.
Even though the new location is lower, the visibility in the new facility is improved, thanks to the additional cameras that were installed as part of the project, Eggers said.
"When we were up there, when it was a foggy day, we were in a cloud," Eggers said. "In the tower we were in, we had about a 30 percent visibility for the ramp area that we controlled. Here, we don"™t have a view out the window, but we have cameras that give us 100 percent viewability of all the areas we control»…
