Ease of Travel

If you’ve ever flown in recent years and had the pleasure of going through security checkpoint lines at different airports, you’ll notice that the logistics at each airport varies greatly. At some you have long tables where folks can unload laptops and other electronics as they wait for people to go through the metal detectors. At other, the tables are short and so there is a mad rush of laptop bags unzipping and coins being removed from pockets before people are shoved through the detectors. Well, USAToday published an article today about just that.

If you read the article, you can see that the airport security folks don’t get together, across the airports, and get a “best practices” manual together for how security should be conducted. We’re not talking about what happens behind the scenes but more like studies on how long the table needs to be for peak efficiency or how many buckets to have. Their target time for a passenger getting through the checkpoint is ten minutes - many times they’re not even close.

However, in places where there are longer tables and more lanes, throughput still isn’t necessarily improved. Airlines have also redistributed departure times to help with the rush, so a mass of people aren’t all trying to get through at once.

There are some innovative ideas such as the use of plastic bags:

In May, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport officials installed plastic-bag dispensers along every checkpoint line along with signs directing travelers to put keys, cell phones and shoes inside. The airport spent two weeks testing bags of different size, color and sealing mechanism before choosing clear, two-gallon, drawstring bags that are see-through, big enough to hold shoes and easily grabbed.

Jim Crites, the airport’s executive vice president of operations, says passengers now go through each security lane at a rate of 230 people per hour, up from 177 per hour and above the TSA’s goal of 200 people an hour.

The article is an interesting read.