"New Southwest Florida terminal designed to reduce waits"

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

New terminal designed to reduce waits
Increases to three concourses, 12 security lanes Friday
By Laura Ruane
The Fort Myers (FL) News-Press

 
Those really long waits for screening at Southwest Florida International
could be history.

Airport and federal security leaders say the floor plan of the twice-bigger,
new passenger terminal will help shrink the checkpoint lines that made
national news this spring. So will additional workers promised for this
fall.

The $438 million terminal is scheduled to open Friday, replacing the
22-year-old facility north of the runway. During the steamy summer, the
seasonal decline in tourists keeps lines manageable most of the time.

At the new terminal, the local director of the Transportation Security
Administration said passengers will notice a welcome difference - even in
March, historically the busiest month.

"Instead of two concourses with eight (security) lanes, we'll have three
concourses, and 12 lanes," said Bob Cohen, federal security director at the
airport south of Fort Myers.

Peak-season statistics and growth projections are used when designing
airport security checkpoints, Cohen said. Each checkpoint at the new
terminal has the ability to handle 200 passengers per hour, on average.
"That means if all the lanes are up, you can process an additional 800
people per hour," Cohen said. "Is it going to decrease wait times? No
question."

Then he quickly added: "We will never rush people through at the expense of
security."

The airport also is gaining 24 screeners as part of a nationwide
reallocation. That will bring the total work force to about 245 - an
increase of almost 11 percent.

However, at the overcrowded old terminal, it's been hard to keep checkpoints
from turning into chokepoints.

According to USA Today reports earlier this year:

. On 26 occasions in March, passengers at the local airport waited longer
than 40 minutes before reaching metal detectors.

.Those extra-long waits were more than double those experienced at any
airport in the country that month. The newspaper compared waiting times at
the nation's 100 busiest airports.

"We did a million in passengers in March, in a terminal designed to do about
300,000 passengers a month," airport spokeswoman Susan Sanders told USA
Today.

The national newspaper - owned by Gannett, the parent company of The
News-Press - then did a follow-up analysis of checkpoint wait times from
June 1, 2004, through May 15.

For this period, the Fort Myers airport ranked eighth among the nation's
major airports; 13.4 percent of passengers waited in security lines of more
than 10 minutes.

Reflecting on the wait data for March, local TSA director Cohen said that no
passenger missed their flight that month because of a TSA screening. Wait
times for the entire month of March, Cohen said, averaged out to just over
18 minutes. Looking at the local wait-time data over 2004, the average was
6.5 minutes. This year, before the new terminal opens, it's running closer
to 6.75 minutes, "but bear in mind," Cohen said, "that's with a 15 percent
increase in passengers."

Ilya Zeldes, who's waited in security lines, looks forward to trying out the
new terminal in October when he and his wife, Emma, fly to New York.

The North Fort Myers retiree will be happy to skip the chore of "taking the
luggage to the check-in counter, and then taking it to the luggage-screening
area, then going to the passenger screening, taking your shoes off, and
jumping barefoot onto a soiled floor."

The old terminal, Zeldes noted, wasn't designed to comfortably accommodate
all of the new security equipment and screening procedures that followed
911. "This created a havoc at the airport and great inconvenience for both
passengers and employees," he said.

Zeldes attended the terminal's May 15 public preview, at which the airport
demonstrated the automated system that will take checked-in luggage through
an explosives detection system, and on to a staging area.

"I think it will be convenient," Zeldes said, "but of course, it's hard to
envision how it will work in reality."

Attached Photo:

.Ozzie Selent, right, checks the bording passes of passengers departing from
Terminal B at Southwest Florida International Airport on Monday. The old
terminal has had some of the longest waits in the country during the tourist
season, but TSA is adding lanes to the new terminal in order to expedite the
process.

bilde.jpg