"D/FW Installs Nation's First Comprehensive In-Line Baggage System"

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Texas Airport Installs Nation's First Comprehensive In-Line Baggage
System
The Fort Worth (TX) Star-Telegram


In the darkness beneath many of the nation's largest airports, a bypass
is under construction.

Workers are assembling vast mazes of conveyor belts in abandoned train
stations, underground parking areas and other unused subterranean
spaces. The conveyors snake from airport ticket counters along basement
ceilings, spiraling down to secret rooms -- nicknamed "black hole," or
"matrix" or "black box" -- where every piece of checked baggage will
soon get emergency room treatment: a CAT scan, an X-ray, an exploratory
probe, if necessary.

Nine in 10 bags will pass through having never been touched by a human.
The others will pass on to yet another secret room, where they will be
opened and inspected by federal workers.

Dallas/Fort Worth Airport is nine months into the construction of the
nation's first comprehensive "in-line baggage system" built for an
estimated $139 million through a government-airport partnership. It
promises safer flying and a more efficient check-in process.

It is also, for national security reasons, not discussed publicly. D/FW
officials, usually happy to discuss the airport's workings, prefer to
gird the airport's underbelly in secrecy.

"The board has approved the project, and we're just out there designing
and building it," said Clay Paslay, D/FW's executive vice president of
airport development. "There's not a lot to talk about. Maybe it's better
that way."

Once the "on" switch is flipped, public access to sensitive areas will
be severely limited. Short of a terminal evacuation, the public will not
hear about incidents occurring beneath the airport. But while the next
generation of airport security systems is built, government, airport and
construction company sources can talk -- as long as they don't spill any
really big secrets.

A 4,500-square-foot remote monitoring room is being built in Terminal B
-- somewhere. The Transportation Security Administration has 57 new
bomb-detection machines stored -- nearby. A profiling program will flag
the bags of passengers who don't pass muster as good guys -- or maybe
not.

"It will be completely invisible," said Kevin Cox, D/FW's chief
operating officer.

It's hard to keep the "bad guys" guessing with suitcases being opened
and swabbed for traces of explosive powder right at the curb, as they
are at, say, Los Angeles International Airport. Or right in the ticket
lobbies, as they are at D/FW. It's not the best option.

"If you are going through, in full public view, everything that goes on
in security or testing of a bag, you are basically showing the world
everything," Cox said. "That's not how security should be handled:
advertising to the world what is or is not being done."

Maybe passengers don't applaud anymore when planes land, as they did
just after 9-11. But many airports are still at work building security
systems mandated during that original 9-11 fervor.

Included among the unfinished business is an order that the TSA must
screen 100 percent of passenger baggage with bomb-detection machines at
429 U.S. commercial airports.

9-11 didn't involve checked baggage, but security focused in that
direction.

Who would believe, with billions of dollars spent on high-tech fixes,
that a major airport's security response would include passengers
lugging their own bags from the ticket counters to the federal screening
area? Or bags sitting in piles in the lobbies, a potential security
hazard? Or passengers standing in lines to hand over their suitcases,
golf bags and baby seats, all the while digging through pockets and
purses for the boarding passes they just put away?

At D/FW, that's what happened.

And that's because of Lockerbie, airport officials say.

Beth Ann Johnson, 21, a student at Regent's College in London, was
outgoing and happy, an aspiring psychologist. She was a lover of music
and acting.

"She played 14 different instruments," her father, Glenn Johnson,
remembers.

Beth Ann Johnson was flying home to Pennsylvania on Dec. 21, 1988, to
continue her studies. She was sitting in seat 36B on Pan Am Flight 103.

Terror won that day. At 7:02 p.m., at 31,000 feet, plastic explosives
inside a tape recorder packed in a suitcase went off, and Flight 103
exploded in midair. It rained pieces over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259
people aboard and 11 on the ground perished.

Images of the 747's severed nose became a rallying point as families of
victims pressed lawmakers to ensure that the mistakes leading to the
Flight 103 disaster would not be repeated.

Congress enacted the Aviation Security Improvement Act of 1990. The
Federal Aviation Administration, which oversaw airport security until
creation of the TSA, certified the first bomb-detection machines, which
created images of a bag's contents.

But momentum faded. The machines had not been widely deployed in the
United States by 9-11.

U.S. security officials, mindful of Lockerbie, had planned against
threats emanating from European airports, and airport security was
concentrated there.

"The baggage-screening process here was in selectee mode, and it was
just being done for 5 percent of the bags," said Gene Barry, a project
manager with Fort Worth-based Carter and Burgess. Barry worked with an
FAA group designing in-line baggage systems for European airports after
the Lockerbie tragedy.

On Sept. 11, 2001, terror won again. Al Qaeda did not use European
airports or checked baggage. Four U.S. planes were hijacked and suicide
pilots used them as missiles, killing 2,976 people.

In quick response, Congress enacted the Aviation and Transportation
Security Act in November 2001. Among the mandates was an acceleration of
programs started in the wake of Lockerbie, including the
baggage-screening requirement.

"The only good thing to come from this is that, following 9-11, when
everybody wanted something done immediately, it could be done because
the development had already taken place," said Glen Johnson, chairman of
Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, a passenger advocacy group that worked
with the FAA and designers on more effective screening equipment. "It
only required the order to go ahead."

In December 2001, D/FW officials and a team of designers, including
Barry, discussed how to best respond to Congress' new rules. They opted
for the European-style in-line baggage solution. As the national 9-11
response took shape in the ensuing months, other airports would follow.

It's a busy March morning underneath Denver International Airport. The
baggage-screening system hums like a giant air conditioner.

Dozens of suitcases whisk by, pausing inside one of several
minivan-size, bomb-detection machines. Most bags are approved from a
remote monitoring room and move on to baggage handling, having never
been touched by the TSA.

That's the goal.

Denver's baggage handling system is divided into six autonomous modules.
In the module that serves American Airlines, the airport spent $16
million to build a small in-line baggage system.

After the bags pass through bomb-detection machines, a TSA screener in a
remote monitoring room looks at each CAT scan and X-ray and decides
whether the images are threatening. The screener assigns each bag a
"pass" or "no pass."

Red laser beams shoot down from an automated reader, scanning the bar
code on each bag's tag as it moves along a conveyor belt. A large
swinging arm like a pinball flipper steers the bags down one of two
paths. One goes to the planes. The other sends suspicious bags to a team
of TSA screeners in another area down below.

On this day, screener Ted Parsons carefully unpacks an overstuffed
suitcase. His gloved hands poke through the passenger's belongings.

One by one, he goes through an itemized list of unresolved potential
threats. The list is created by the bomb-detection machine and the TSA
screener who reviewed the CAT scan and X-ray images taken by the
machine.

The effectiveness of the screening machines is up for debate. Critics
accuse screeners of making too many mistakes, including high
false-positive rates.

Because of their density, books stacked together, chocolate and peanut
butter can be mistaken for bombs. During an explosives trace search with
a special wand, fertilizer on golf shoes and common hand lotion have
triggered false positives.

After the hand inspection, Parsons repacks the suitcase.

He places a blue tag on the bag and includes a notice that says it has
been inspected by the TSA. The tag is for identification purposes. But
the numbers can be traced back to Parsons' station at Denver
International.

If something is lost, broken, or stolen between the airport and the
passenger's final destination, guess who will get blamed?

It's an inevitable part of the job. Parsons doesn't worry about it. He
has already moved on to the next bag.

A black Samsonite slides into the room. It could be anybody's. Based on
the time of day, it's probably headed to Chicago O'Hare Airport, or
maybe St. Louis Lambert, but it's impossible to tell. It came down to
Parsons' room because the scanner with the red laser beams didn't know
what to tell the pinball flipper to do.

Parsons calls a supervisor, who calls an American Airlines crew chief.
Grim faces gather around the suitcase.

The bag tests negative for explosives. But it has no tag.

"The only thing I can do is send it back to bag service," the crew chief
decides. "I don't want to send it to Chicago if it's going to
Frankfurt."

The suitcase is taken away and everyone goes back to work.

This time, the system had caught a service foul-up, nothing more.

But, should a screener such as Parsons be unable to determine why a bag
is red-flagged, airport police would be called. A bomb-sniffing dog
would be brought in, and a bomb squad expert or two, or perhaps many.
Maybe a hazardous-materials unit or a bomb-handling robot. A special
chamber to contain a blast could be wheeled in.

The response would escalate until the threat was resolved.

It's afternoon at D/FW Airport. A couple of lonely hammers pound a
serenade in the Delta air cargo hangar near Terminal E. Lockheed Martin
workers pull a pallet from among hundreds of crates, break a crate open
and assemble the pinkish conveyor sections within.

"We like to pre-assemble as much as possible before taking them inside,"
Lockheed Martin project manager Bruce Muir says.

This will be part of Terminal C's in-line baggage system.

It will offer a return, at least in terms of customer service, to
pre-9-11 conditions. Passengers will drop their bags at the ticket
counter, then pick them up on the carousel at their destination.

The average hand inspection by a screener is expected to take three
minutes, 51 seconds. Even during peak hours, 95 percent of baggage is
supposed to pass through security in 10 minutes or less.

For now, the hammers ring.

Later, parts will be hung from brackets affixed to the ceiling in
Terminal C's basement. To keep disruptions to a minimum, most of the
work is being done at night.

Airport, airline and construction crews quickly turn 12 gates into night
work zones, then back into gates at dawn.

The scope of the work is vast.

D/FW is the third busiest airport in the world, usually serving 17
million to 18 million more passengers than Denver each year. It also has
four terminals, with a fifth being built and a sixth in the planning
stages. Because of the configuration, D/FW requires a largely autonomous
system for each terminal.

The Denver module has one operating bomb-detection machine and one
backup. Each D/FW screening area will include five to eight machines,
all running, serving as backups for the backups of the backups.

"Redundancy is the most important part of the system," says Federal
Security Director Jimmy Wooten, the TSA's top official at D/FW.

The system must work during peak hours, through partial shutdowns,
personnel shortages and with key components broken. It must work in the
future, when D/FW grows to its expected six terminals, eight runways and
more than 1 million flights a year.

A viable in-line baggage system is and will be a basic part of U.S.
airports' defenses against terrorism.

But will it help the next time terror evolves and strikes?

Glenn Johnson of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 says he doesn't know the
answer.

"When you build a wall, someone will find a way to get over it, but it
doesn't mean you don't build it," he said.


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