Atlanta airport unveils underground baggage screening system

<p>With suitcases piled on a luggage cart before them, transportation safety officers Lisa Brandt and Cassandra Frederick helped each other hoist a large black wheeled bag onto the ramp of a federal baggage screening machine Thursday at the Atlanta airport.</p><p>Then they moved another. And another.</p><p>In a single work shift, Transportation Security Administration officers such as Brandt and Frederick may hoist up to 800 bags _ many weighing about 50 pounds _ onto the explosives detectors. Such constant heavy lifting, which can jar backs and injure toes and feet, has left TSA employees with the highest injury rate in federal government.</p><p>"There are a lot of back injuries," Frederick said before loading a child seat and two rolling suitcases onto the detector's ramp.</p><p>But federal officials said Thursday that a new baggage screening system at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport _ costing $175 million and mostly automated _ will help reduce TSA injuries and save time for air travelers. The new system, which sends checked baggage underground for screening, began operating July 6 at the airport's North Terminal.</p><p>Next month a similar underground screening center will begin functioning at the South Terminal, where Delta's check-in gates are located and where Brandt and Frederick work. A third underground center will open next spring for international flights at the airport. Officers whose jobs are replaced by the new system will be re-trained to do passenger screening, TSA officials said.</p><p>The system already is in place at a half-dozen other airports around the country, including Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth, Oakland, Calif., San Diego, Tampa, Fla., and Jacksonville, Fla.</p><p>"This will bring the pre-9/11 convenience to the traveling public but with post-9/11 security," said Willie Williams, the TSA's Atlanta federal security director.</p><p>The convenience, Williams said, comes from saving up to seven minutes in check-in time. That's because passengers will no longer have to drag checked luggage to a baggage screening machine. The new system allows travelers to leave their checked luggage at the check-in counter. The bags then are taken via conveyor belt to the underground screening machines.</p><p>Kathy Shearer, 40, of Phoenix, waited in a line Thursday to drop off her checked suitcase at a baggage machine. She said Williams' promise of time savings sounded good.</p><p>"When you travel three to five times a month, it adds up, from an aggravation standpoint," the pharmaceutical saleswoman said. "An extra seven minutes can be a soda or chai tea or an extra five minutes to check your e-mails. I'll take it."</p><p>Once underground, the bags go through one of the North Terminal's nine screening machines. Fifteen are planned for the South Terminal and 12 more for the international flights' screening area. If the machines do not detect anything potentially dangerous, the bags are released on a conveyor belt that returns them to the airline.</p><p>But bags deemed potentially dangerous are sent on another conveyor belt while a TSA screener decides whether they need to be examined by hand. If additional examination is necessary, the bag is taken to a room where a TSA officer searches it.</p><p>Williams and other TSA officials said the new system reduces injuries because officers no longer must lift bags. Any bags that need to be examined travel on conveyor belts or may be slid onto carts that can be used to take bags to examination tables of the same height as the carts.</p><p>"Our employees will no longer be involved in lifting and tugging the bags," he said.</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2006/8/119438