"Mineta San Jose Int'l terminals may differ on boarding rules"

Monday, February 3, 2003

Mineta terminals may differ on boarding rules
By Andrew F. Hamm   
The San Jose (CA) Business Journal


While new federal regulations regarding boarding passes at some airports
already are confusing travelers, Mineta San Jose International Airport is
contemplating throwing them another curve: separate policies for its two
terminals. 

The federal Transportation Security Administration plans to eventually
require all passengers to have a boarding pass and photo identification
before going through a security checkpoint. This policy is being instituted
one airport at a time since the first of the year, although a few "test"
airports started earlier. 

As of Jan. 29, 85 of the nation's 429 airports were requiring passengers to
have a boarding pass and photo ID before going through checkpoints. The
nation's 40 largest airports are expected to have the system in place by
March, with the rest by the end of summer, TSA officials have said. 

The new requirement is supposed to give TSA officials more control over who
is in the airport while shortening the security process, TSA officials say.
It eliminates the secondary searches at the flight gate but is expected to
increase the number of searches at the security checkpoint. 

But Terminal A at Mineta San Jose is too cramped and its design will make it
tough to provide enough space for the increased inspections at its
checkpoints, says James Thomas, TSA's security director for the airport. The
airport's two largest carriers - American Airlines and Southwest Airlines -
operate in Terminal A, which carried 592,093 passengers in December. 

Terminal C, which houses various other airlines, handled 342,182 passengers
during the same month. 

"It's going to be very hard to do, period," Mr. Thomas says. "We are in the
process of assessing the situation now. There are no deadlines that I am
aware of. We will institute the new policy when we know it will work." 

At a Jan. 24 meeting between airport, airline and TSA officials, TSA
unveiled a proposal to institute separate boarding pass policies for its two
terminals. 

Under that plan, passengers in Terminal C would need to have a boarding pass
and photo identification to get through the security checkpoint, while those
in Terminal A would not. However, passengers in Terminal A would still be
subject to secondary searches at the flight gate, while those in Terminal C
would not. 

That plan could further confuse airline passengers trying to figure out
which airport is under which set of rules, airline officials say. 

"We were expecting to get it done everywhere," says Juanamaria Cook, manager
for passenger services for American Airlines in San Jose. "Let's get it
done." 

Travel agents have reported confusion, missed flights and more frustration
as people flying from one airport with one set of rules find they might
arrive at another airport with another set of rules. 

"There is a little bit of confusion out there," says Marc Casto, owner of
Casto Travel. "But the lines are no longer at the check-in, they are at the
counter." 

In response, some airlines have developed an online boarding pass system
where a passenger with an electronic ticket can have a boarding pass in-hand
by the time he reaches the airport. However, not all airlines have such a
system, and those that do have different times when a boarding pass can be
printed, anywhere from 72 to 12 hours before a flight. 

Southwest Airlines, San Jose's largest carrier in terms of volume, doesn't
allow online boarding passes per se, but does allow its passengers to print
a "security document" with virtually the same information, which TSA
officials say will suffice. 

Other passengers can use automated kiosks located at the airport. Alaska
Airlines has 13 kiosks, American Airlines, 10; Southwest, eight; Northwest,
two; and Continental, four. America West and AirTrans Airways are rushing
kiosks into the terminals, company officials say. 

Still, only about 40 percent of passengers overall and 66 percent of
business travelers use an electronic ticket. The rest will have to stand in
line at the counter or get the skycap to issue a boarding pass, says Alaska
Airlines spokesman Jack Walsh. 

Several airlines also are rushing development of an automated kiosk that
will work with paper tickets, he adds. 

"Right now, people with paper tickets will need to stand in line. It gives
one more advantage to electronic tickets," Mr. Walsh says. "We recommend to
our passengers that they plan on getting boarding passes from whatever
airport they are flying to or from... just to be safe." 

Oakland Metropolitan International Airport is one of the 85 airports now
requiring boarding passes. San Francisco is expected to have the system by
March. 

"It's a little too early to see how it will all work," says John Salah,
travel coordinator for Xilinx Corp. "We tell our travelers to get a boarding
pass wherever they are going."


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