"In-line EDS: Kentucky airport says screening system better, saves money"

Monday, March 14, 2005

Airport says screening system better, saves money
By Thomas Frank
USA TODAY


Many hallmarks of post-9/11 air travel are missing from Blue Grass Airport
in Lexington, Ky. There are no luggage-screening machines crowding lobbies.
No government screeners heaving bags around. No suitcase-wiping with cotton
swabs in an imperfect attempt to detect explosives.

The midsize airport has one of the most modern, efficient and effective
luggage-screening operations in the USA.

But few airports have similar systems because they lack what Blue Grass got
in 2002: a federal grant to build a conveyor-belt system. The belt carries
luggage from check-in counters through bomb-detection machines in a back
room, without any handling.

It's a significant improvement over the old system. At most airports, the
government set up bomb detectors in lobbies and basements without connecting
them to anything after a post-9/11 law required all luggage to be screened
for explosives. Teams of federal screeners must hoist bags on and off the
machines in a labor-intensive and less accurate screening process.

It cost an extra $4 million to build the belts at Blue Grass and buy more
advanced bomb-detection machines than the government had planned. The
airport persuaded the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to let it
build the conveyor system with funding obtained through a $3.6 million grant
from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The extra cost was recovered in 16 months, airport executive director
Michael Gobb says. The airport uses just seven luggage screeners a day
instead of a projected 56, saving $3.2 million a year. "State-of-the-art,"
Gobb says.

But the TSA has scaled back funding, pressuring airports to pay for
screening upgrades themselves. The agency is also analyzing just how much
benefit comes from belt systems.

"We need to be more precise about the costing and return on investment so we
have a better handle on how good a deal we're getting for the taxpayer," TSA
Associate Administrator Tom Blank says.

A Government Accountability Office report says the TSA could save $1.3
billion over seven years at nine airports now installing belt systems. But
one of the airports is actually seeing costs increase, and Blank questions
the GAO estimate. He concedes, however, that belt systems cut screening
costs by 25% at each airport and handle more than twice as many bags per
hour as machines that are not linked to a conveyor system. 

When Blue Grass built its belt system, the TSA installed two minivan-size
machines that take rotating X-ray images of a bag to pinpoint possible
explosives. Without the belt system, the airport would have relied on cruder
technology wherein screeners swipe suitcases with a cotton swab designed to
pick up explosives particles.

The TSA paid the $1.6 million cost of two bomb-detection machines at Blue
Grass. That's unusually inexpensive. And it got the FAA grant shortly before
the agency barred airports from using its money for security.

"We're not going to do anything unless they pay for it," says Mark Mancuso,
deputy public safety director at the Houston Airport System, which is
considering a $200 million belt system at George Bush Intercontinental
Airport.

At Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., airport authority
President James Bennett asked the TSA a year ago to help pay the $250
million cost of a belt system that would relieve travelers from hauling
luggage across the terminal to a scanning machine.

"I've had no real response," Bennett says. Only Tampa International Airport
has paid for an airport-wide belt system without federal money, footing the
$124 million bill itself. 

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is planning to put belt
systems in new terminals being built or planned at Kennedy, LaGuardia and
Newark airports. The authority also manages New York City-area bridges,
tunnels, bus terminals and a commuter subway in the heart of Ground Zero.

"If the federal government takes the position that 'You don't need our
help,' " Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia says, "we're just going to
have less money to do something someplace else."


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