At the crowded Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, federal airport security officials debuted passenger self-screening lanes on Wednesday. They intend to test the technology before implementing it in other American cities.
“How do we step into the future? This is a step,” according to system designer and undersecretary for science and technology at the US Department of Homeland Security Dimitri Kusnezov. “The interface with people makes all the difference.”
The Transportation Security Administration checkpoint features a screen with self-help instructions explaining how passengers can easily pass themselves and their carry-on luggage through pre-flight screening with little to no assistance from uniformed TSA officers. Initially, the checkpoint was only available in Las Vegas, was only for TSA PreCheck customers, and only used the English language.
John Fortune, program manager of the Department of Homeland Security’s “Screening at Speed” program and one of the prototype’s developers alongside Kusnezov, stated, “We want to avoid passengers having to be patted down.”
The futuristic-looking baggage and personal items inspection system resembles a scaled-down starship medical magnetic resonance imaging equipment rather than a boxy belt-fed apparatus using a stack of gray trays. Between users, trays are sanitized with germ-killing UV light thanks to an automated bin return system.
Visitors enter a distinct transparent glass body scanning booth, which is equipped with a video display that instructs travelers on how to stand when their bodies are detected using a device known as “millimeter wave technology,” according to officials. It was found by a reporter to be sensitive enough to locate a pocket handkerchief that had been lost. He was spared from taking off his shoes.
Christina Peach, a TSA administrator engaged in the system design, stated, “Really, one of the main aims here is to allow individuals to get through the system without necessarily having to interact directly with an officer and … at their own pace,” “It’s also about not feeling rushed.”
According to agency spokesman R. Carter Langston, almost all travelers who pay to sign up for the TSA PreCheck program clear screening in 10 minutes or less nationwide, compared to the 30 minutes it typically takes for standard traveler and carry-on processing.
According to Peach, instead of the current system’s twelve police per lane, eight uniformed TSA personnel might be required to staff two lanes.
But according to Kusnezov and Karen Burke, the federal security director of TSA in Nevada, agents—including union members—would simply be released from doing in-person screening in order to concentrate more on wider security issues.
Burke declared, “No one is going to lose their job.”
Fortune stated that the kind of scanners utilized were comparable to those that were already in use across the nation, but he declined to provide an estimate for the cost of system design.
During this year’s evaluations, officials said they would time how quickly travelers move through the prototype.
Testing is taking place at a first-of-its-kind “innovation checkpoint” in the country, which the TSA unveiled in 2019 at Harry Reid Airport’s expansive international arrivals terminal, which opened in 2012. It already has screening lanes with wait time estimates and instruction displays.
As the vice president of K2 Security Screening Group, a business that installs screening systems at shipping ports including airports, Keith Jeffries, a former director of the TSA at Los Angeles International Airport, stated, “This change in technology is for people who want to get through a checkpoint faster.” “It’ll be a great step, but I anticipate it will be for the experienced passengers.”
In a Tuesday interview with The Associated Press, Jeffries compared the new setup to self-checkout lanes, which were first implemented in the 1980s and are now widely available at supermarkets around the country. He mentioned that some consumers at first refrained from scanning their own products.
Concerning the TSA screening lanes, he stated, “It’s going to take time to educate the public,” “You’re going to have a new generation of travelers that just wants to get through with the least amount of hassle and delay. I think eventually we’ll see more and more of them.”
Airports Council International ranked Harry Reid International Airport, which is located behind New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, as the seventh busiest passenger airport in the United States in 2022. The airport in Las Vegas handled 57.6 million passengers coming and going in 2023, setting a new record.
The day after the NFL Super Bowl was played at Allegiant Stadium on February 12, approximately 104,000 travelers and their bags were screened as they headed for airline flights. According to the Transportation Security Administration, this was the busiest day the airport has ever seen.