New technology at airport security checkpoints is poised to greet some of the more than 40 million people who will board flights over the next two-and-a-half weeks.
The multi-faceted approach the Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency that oversees aviation safety, uses to prevent a dangerous situation from unfolding at 40,000 feet or inside the airport is not changing. But the technology TSA uses is being swapped out in some airports to meet growing threats.
The biggest change passengers will see is how carry-on baggage is scanned. Instead of sending a suitcase down a conveyer belt, through an X-ray machine, and then picking it up at the other end, passengers at 13 airports will be dropping bags into a huge white machine that looks like a CT machine — because, in fact, it is.
The machine uses computed tomography to look at items passing through it. The officer can move the item around on screen to look at it from different angles.
“The difference really is night and day in terms of what the operator sees because the CT scan is three-dimensional versus two-dimensional,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said during a recent operational tour of Washington Dulles International Airport.
Approximately 2,500 X-ray machines are in use at 440 airports around the country. Forty-two CT scanners are in use and TSA expects to roll out 200 more of these machines to airports in 2019.
Pekoske said the CT machines make it so easy for officers to detect items of concern that they do not need liquids or other items to be removed from the bag. However, for the time being, passengers are required to remove those normal items but can keep laptops in bags.
Thirteen other airports are boosting the technology they use to scan boarding passes when passengers arrive at the security checkpoint.
Credential Authentication Technology, known as CAT, gives officers sitting at the end of security lines a screen to look at with an enlarged picture of the person’s picture and license or passport on file.
It also shows the airline, flight number, airport, and other travel information for the person associated with that boarding pass.
“Rather than having the officer look down and try to make sure that [the license is] authentic and then match the picture on the credential with the passenger standing in front of him or her, this puts the credential up on the screen,” said Pekoske. “The officer is looking at the passenger, so it’s more engaged with the passenger and that engagement results in better security for us.”
Hundreds more of these machines will be rolled out in 2019.
