The CUSS Handbook / Glossary of common-use terms

Glossary

The category runs on acronyms, and most documents assume you already know them. These are the ones that appear across this handbook and in the published specifications.

The standards

CUSS — Common Use Self Service: The IATA standard allowing multiple airlines to share physical kiosks and other self-service devices. Published as Recommended Practice 1706c. See the CUSS standard.
CUPPS — Common Use Passenger Processing Systems: The companion standard for shared staffed positions: check-in desks and gate podiums, used simultaneously or consecutively by multiple airlines and service providers. Published as IATA Recommended Practice 1797 and by ACI as RP 500A07. See CUPPS.
CUWS — Common Use Web Services: IATA Recommended Practice 1741. Standardises data exchange supporting common-use self bag drop through web-services technology, covering tasks including passenger identification management, airside security access and boarding.
CUTE — Common Use Terminal Equipment: The earlier generation of shared airport workstation technology that preceded CUPPS. Still encountered in older estates and in procurement documents written by people who lived through it.
BCBP — Bar Coded Boarding Pass: IATA Resolution 792, defining the machine-readable bar code format for boarding pass data across paper and mobile devices. Version 8 took effect on 1 June 2020. It is what makes a pass printed at a shared kiosk readable at every downstream reader.
RP — Recommended Practice: The IATA publication type most common-use standards take. A Recommended Practice is not law; its force comes from industry adoption and from being written into contracts.

Platform and architecture

Application manager: The platform component that controls the launch screen and the kiosk applications, starts an application when a passenger selects an airline, and recovers the machine when a session ends.
Application: Software that provides a service to the customer — typically an airline's check-in flow. Runs on the platform; does not talk to hardware directly.
Device component: The platform layer providing applications with access to a kiosk hardware device: printer, scanner, reader, and so on, exposed as a capability rather than a driver.
System management: Supervision of the common-use network and control of individual kiosks: monitoring, availability, application distribution, taking units out of service, and usage data.
Platform: The whole software stack that owns a common-use device and brokers access to it. The subject of certification.
Launch screen: The idle screen presented by the application manager, from which a passenger selects an airline. Owned by the platform provider, not by any carrier.
CORBA: The distributed object technology on which the CUSS 1.x generation defined its fixed interfaces, chosen for system independence and interoperability across implementation languages. Superseded by web technologies in CUSS 2.

Roles

Platform supplier: Develops and integrates the platform software and hardware, and takes the platform through certification.
Platform provider: Purchases, installs, operates and maintains the platform, and integrates applications onto it. Typically the airport.
Application provider: Provides and operates the service applications. Typically the airline.
Application supplier: Implements the service applications. Often a third party working for the airline.
Independent service provider: A company operating common-use infrastructure at an airport under contract. Named in the US regulatory definition of a shared-use kiosk. See who does what.

Passenger and baggage processing

DCS — Departure Control System: The airline system that holds the flight, manages check-in, seat allocation, weight and balance, and boarding. A kiosk application is a front end to it.
Self bag drop: Baggage acceptance performed by the passenger rather than an agent. One-step units tag and accept in a single place; two-step units accept a bag already tagged elsewhere. See common-use self bag drop.
BSM — Baggage Source Message: The message that tells the baggage handling system a bag exists and where it is going. Correct emission by a shared acceptance unit, for whichever carrier it is acting for, is a core requirement.
Licence plate: The IATA concept of a unique identifying number carried on a bag tag through the handling system, underpinning automated baggage handling.
ATB — Automated Ticket and Boarding pass: The older card-stock boarding pass and ticket format, with a magnetic stripe. Largely displaced by bar coded boarding passes, but persistent in device specifications.
PECTAB — Peripheral Control Table: Configuration data downloaded to a printer telling it how to lay out a document. A legacy concept from the terminal-emulation era, still met in older estates.
Self-boarding gate: A gate at which a passenger scans their own boarding pass to board. Increasingly specified as a common-use device.

Regulatory

ACAA — Air Carrier Access Act: The US statute providing the principal authority for the air travel non-discrimination rules, including the kiosk requirements.
Automated airport kiosk: The regulated category under 14 CFR Part 382. Scope turns on function and location, not on what a machine is called.
Shared-use automated airport kiosk: A self-service transaction machine jointly owned, controlled or leased by an airport operator and carriers and/or an independent service provider, providing carrier software applications that let customers independently access flight-related services. See kiosk accessibility.
Enplanement: A passenger boarding an aircraft. The US kiosk accessibility rule applies at airports with 10,000 or more per year.
Closed functionality: A device on which a user cannot install their own software, including their own assistive technology. Kiosks are the archetype, which is why they attract specific accessibility requirements rather than general software ones.