LAS VEGAS– Federal airport security officials unveiled self-check lanes for passengers at Las Vegas’ busy Harry Reid International Airport on Wednesday, with plans to test them for use in other cities around the country.
“How do we step into the future? This is a step,” said system designer Dimitri Kusnezov, assistant secretary for science and technology at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “The interface with people makes the difference.”
The Transportation Security Administration checkpoint — initially only in Las Vegas, only for TSA PreCheck customers and only in the English language — includes a screen with do-it-yourself instructions telling people how to get themselves and their carry-on luggage smoothly through the pre-flight screening with little or no assistance from uniformed TSA officers.
“We want to avoid having to pat down passengers,” said John Fortune, program manager of the Department of Homeland Security’s “Screening at Speed” program and co-developer of the prototype with Kusnezov.
Instead of a boxy, belt-fed device with a stack of gray bins, the futuristic-looking baggage and personal belongings inspection system resembles a scaled-down medical magnetic resonance imaging machine on a spaceship. It uses an automated tray return that cleans trays with germicidal ultraviolet light between users.
Travelers step into a separate clear-glass body-scanning booth containing a video display that shows how to stand when spotted with what officials say is the type of “millimeter wave technology” already in use across the country. A reporter found it sensitive enough to identify a forgotten handkerchief in a pocket. He didn’t have to take off his shoes.
“Really, one of the main goals here is to allow individuals to move through the system without necessarily having to communicate directly with an officer and … at their own pace,” said Christina Peach, a TSA administrator involved in the system design. “It’s also about not feeling rushed.”
Nationwide, nearly all passengers who pay to enroll in the TSA PreCheck program pass screening in 10 minutes or less, agency spokesman R. Carter Langston said, while screening for regular travelers and carry-on bags takes about 30 minutes.
Peach said eight uniformed TSA officers could be needed to staff two lanes of the new system, compared to 12 officers in lanes today.
However, Kusnezov and Karen Burke, federal security director for TSA in Nevada, said agents, including union members, would simply be freed from hands-on screening to draw more attention to broader security concerns.
“No one is going to lose their job,” Burke said.
Fortune declined to estimate the cost of the system’s design, but he said the type of scanners used were similar to those already deployed across the country.
Officials said they will measure how quickly travelers move through the prototype during evaluations this year.
Testing is being conducted at an “innovation checkpoint” unique in the country that TSA unveiled in 2019 in a sprawling international arrivals terminal that opened in 2012 at Harry Reid Airport. It already has screening lanes with instructional displays and estimated wait times.
“This technology change is for people who want to get through a checkpoint faster,” said Keith Jeffries, former TSA director at Los Angeles International Airport and now vice president of K2 Security Screening Group, a company that installs screening systems at shipping ports. including airports. “It will be a big step, but I expect this will also be for the experienced passengers.”
Jeffries, in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, compared the new system to self-checkout lanes that were introduced in the 1980s and are now common in grocery stores across the country. He recalled that some shoppers initially avoided scanning their own purchases.
“It will take time to educate the public,” he said of the TSA screening lines. “You get a new generation of travelers who just want to get through with as little hassle and delay as possible. I think we’ll eventually see more and more of it.”
Harry Reid International Airport was the seventh busiest passenger airport in the US in 2022, ranked by Airports Council International behind New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. In 2023, Las Vegas Airport handled a new record of 57.6 million arriving and departing passengers.
The Transportation Security Administration reported the airport’s busiest day ever last month, with nearly 104,000 travelers and their luggage screened as they headed for airline flights on Feb. 12, the day after the NFL Super Bowl was played at Allegiant Stadium .
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Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
