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AirportImprovement.com      July | August 2026
TERMINALS 
SAT
users. The remedy required more time and 
effort to ensure the right personnel had access 
in the real-world working environment. 
Despite advance awareness of the looming 
issue, SAT learned it needed more than two 
days to fully resolve the programming. The 
key takeaway, Mayo emphasizes, is to allow 
enough time to identify and fix unexpected 
blips. 
“Everyone wants Day One to be 100%; 
everything running smoothly with no issues,” 
she says. “But there’s a reality that you 
can’t catch everything. Even back-of-
house spaces require planning. It’s not just 
passenger-facing [areas]; it’s the whole 
ecosystem.”
The effectiveness of ORAT is maximized 
when it’s implemented before design, she 
adds, noting that many stakeholders don’t 
realize the importance of attending reviews 
and providing feedback.
“The more time you give yourself to 
understand change, plan for how that change 
is going to impact your operations and how 
you’re going to mitigate that change risk factor, 
the better your opening day and post-opening 
[period] are going to be,” Mayo says.
Trupiano also sings the praises of ORAT, 
especially to test operational issues well 
before they can morph into operational 
concerns. Asking questions and running 
practical tests from the design phase 
onward, he notes, helps ensure an airport 
owner receives a facility its staff can 
effectively maintain and operate 
for decades.
“If the operations or maintenance teams 
find something that doesn’t work for them, 
there’s the opportunity to come up with a 
new process or influence the outcome of 
the next big project,” says Trupiano. “Seeing 
benefits and challenges on a smaller scale 
pays off later.”
Lesson learned in building the ground 
loading facility and Terminal C will influence 
future renovations to terminals A and B, 
he adds. 
Portraying the City
Like most airports, SAT strives to continually 
remind passengers where they are. But 
narrowing down the quintessential features of 
a city whose history spans more than three 
centuries proved surprisingly difficult. 
PHOTO: RAMA TIRU
The airside face of the Concourse A expansion includes the airport’s three-letter identifier. 

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