In 1999, Kent County International Airport became Gerald R. Ford International Airport and, at the beginning of the new Millennium, it completed a $50 million renovation of its passenger terminal building. Since then, its programme of improvement and upgrade has continued, with one of the most recent additions being an extensive Ampetronic induction loop system, designed to improve the experience of its hearing impaired customers.
Jonathan Curtiss, network manager for Kent County Department of Aeronautics, comments: "One of the reasons we decided to put in a loop system was that it was brought to our attention by our director Jim Koslosky, whose son has hearing loss. In fact, he can barely hear with the hearing aid and as a result Jim has always been an advocate for these types of things.
"That was the start of it. From there, we looked at all the different available systems. Some of our decision points were made based on whether they were UL listed, what the reputation of the company was in terms of reliability and support for the product and lastly, what was the total cost of ownership for a system?
"We had a small committee here who ranked each of the companies that we looked at. There were really only two that were viable at the time and, based on our ranking, the whole committee was unanimous that we choose Ampetronic."
From there the team looked for a local vendor that would be able to support the system. "That turned out to be ASCOM," says Curtiss. "They already support our PA system, so they had a deeper level of knowledge of how to integrate the PA system to the Ampetronic system. That was very important for us, especially as we have a 24/7 operation and didn't want to have interruption in service while the loop was being installed."
(Jim Evans)
