"Burbank airport to end sidewalk screening late this year"

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Airport to end sidewalk screening late this year
By Alex Dobuzinskis
The Pasadena (CA) Star-News


Bob Hope Airport will end sidewalk luggage inspection after the
Thanksgiving rush, when a $3 million conveyor system will be linked to
new screening machines, officials said Monday. 

The approval of the conveyor system by a 7-0 vote of the airport's
governing body ensures that four screening machines, valued at $8
million, will be retained at the Burbank airport by the federal
Transportation Security Administration. 

With the new system, "people won't be lining up on the sidewalk when
they have their bags inspected,' said Charles Lombardo, president of the
airport commission. 

"We don't have the widest sidewalks, so that will move people indoors,
which should ... allow better processing and much more efficient use of
the space in front of the terminal,' he said. 

The airport has had baggage inspection on the sidewalk since after the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when federal officials called for
stepped-up inspection. 

Before the attacks, 5 percent of luggage was screened for explosives,
but that was increased to 100 percent with new regulations that went
into effect in January 2003, said Nico Melendez, spokesman for the TSA. 

To accommodate the new screening system, the airport undertook a $30
million renovation completed last July that added 40,000 square feet of
space. The baggage inspection machines will be behind the walls of the
ticket counters and toward the runways, bringing them away from the
public, officials said. 

Security screeners at the airport now go over baggage with electronic
wands used to scan bags for traces of explosives. The CTX machines the
airport is installing use similar technology as the CT scan used by
doctors, said Victor Gill, a spokesman for the airport authority. 

After the system is installed, "the public will be assured that this
airport has (a) state-of-the- art scanning system. It will be on par
with any airport in the country,' said Victor Gill, a spokesman for the
airport authority. 

Departing passengers arriving at the airport now either have their bags
inspected on the sidewalk and then carted into the airport by an
attendant, or they take the bags in themselves to the ticket counter,
where screeners also check the luggage. 

After the new system is installed and is ready to go following the
Thanksgiving travel rush, passengers will still be able to drop their
bags off with attendants at either place, officials said. 

"They'll still have the same two options that they have now, it's just
that the bags will be screened away from where all the public congestion
is,' said Commissioner Joyce Streator. 

The airport already has an older model CTX scanning machine operating in
Terminal B. 

Additional costs beyond the installation of the conveyor belts,
including the need to hire an ombudsman for the project, will bring the
total cost of getting the new screening system up and running to $3.4
million, Gill said.


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