In-Line Security System Could Save Millions
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Reported by Stew Magnuson
While the Transportation Security Administration struggles to hire and keep baggage screeners, the Government Accountability Office said changing the explosive detection system for checked bags would save millions for taxpayers and reduce labor costs.
Cathleen Berrick, GAO’s director of homeland security and justice issues, said a study of nine airports showed that changing to an in-line system, where bags are scanned on conveyor belts that deliver bags to planes, would save taxpayers $1 billion over seven years. The cost of installing such a system to all but one of the airports would be recovered within one year.
Current systems require transportation security officers to hand feed stand-alone machines. This results in disability due to back injuries, and makes the process more labor intensive.
One of the nine airports studied, however, would require extensive structural changes and result in a $90 million loss over seven years.
Gregory Principato, president of Airports Council International-North America, said the cost of installing in-line systems should be borne entirely by the federal government “given its direct responsibility for baggage screening established in law, in light of the national security imperative for doing so, and because of the economic efficiencies of this strategy,” he told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
The airport at Lexington Blue-Grass Airport in Kentucky paid for its own in-line system, and reduced the number of TSA screeners from 30 per shift to four.
At passenger checkpoints, TSA needs to improve its research and development of a new explosive detection system, Berrick found. Manufacturers have made little progress in reducing false positives, she added.