The CUSS Handbook / Standards and primary sources
Standards and primary sources
Everything asserted on this site is traceable to one of the sources below. Where a source and this handbook disagree, the source governs. Each entry notes what it is actually good for, because several of them are large and only partly relevant.
The standards themselves
- IATA — Common Use Standards
- The canonical index. Lists the common-use Recommended Practices with their current versions, states what each covers, and names the working group that develops them. If you check one page before quoting a version number anywhere, make it this one.
- IATA — Common Use Self Service (CUSS) Toolkit
- What an implementer works from: the CUSS 2 specification, the API and data model definitions in YAML, a certification document template, and a development guide. Also the clearest published statement of the CUSS 2 technology stack and the position of CUSS 1.x.
- IATA Store — Common Use Self Service (CUSS)
- The publication listing for Recommended Practice 1706c and its technical specifications. This is where the document itself is obtained.
- IATA — Common Use Passenger Processing Systems (CUPPS) Technical Specifications
- The CUPPS side of the family: shared check-in desks and gate podiums. Use for version status on RP 1797.
- IATA — Baggage Standards
- Baggage messaging and identification, including the licence plate concept. Relevant to anything involving self bag drop, since a common-use acceptance unit has to emit correct messages downstream.
- IATA — Common Use Strategic Partnerships Program
- Background on how technology suppliers participate in the common-use standards work. Useful for understanding who is in the room.
- IATA — Passenger Experience & Policy
- The wider programme the common-use standards sit inside, if you need the surrounding context.
United States regulation
- eCFR — 14 CFR Part 382
- The current, authoritative text of the US air travel non-discrimination rules. Kiosk requirements are at § 382.57. This is the document that governs, not any summary of it, including ours.
- eCFR — 14 CFR 382.3, definitions
- Where “automated airport kiosk” and “shared-use automated airport kiosk” are defined. Read before assuming a machine is out of scope.
- Federal Register — the 2013 final rule
- The rulemaking that created the kiosk and website requirements, published 12 November 2013. The preamble explains the reasoning behind provisions the codified text simply states, which makes it far more useful than its length suggests.
- US Access Board — Revised 508 Standards and 255 Guidelines
- Information and communication technology accessibility standards, including requirements for devices with closed functionality. Referenced widely in US procurement and directly relevant to kiosk design.
- FAA — Airports
- Programme and planning context for US airports. Peripheral to the standards themselves, useful for the funding and planning environment a deployment sits in.
Research and industry bodies
- ACRP — Developing a Holistic Airport Common Use Program
- Airport Cooperative Research Program material on treating common use as a whole-airport programme rather than a technology purchase. The best independent starting point for the strategic layer, and free.
- ACRP — Common Use Program deep dive
- Goes further into implementation and programme development. Pairs with evaluating a deployment.
- Airports Council International
- The airport industry association, and co-publisher of the CUPPS Recommended Practice as ACI RP 500A07.
A note on sourcing
Two categories of material are deliberately absent. Vendor blogs and product pages are excluded, not because they are worthless — some are the best writing available on specific implementation questions — but because a vendor-neutral reference that cites vendors ends up carrying their framing. Second-hand deployment histories are excluded because they are frequently wrong, and being wrong about what a named airport or airline did is worse than being silent.
If something on this site cannot be traced to a source above, treat it as the author's reading rather than as established fact, and check it.