Some fliers can skip security lines — for a price

< Prev | 1 | 2

Top slideshows

Getty Images	The Big Apple Long referred to as the center of American business, New York is a melting pot of cultures and landscapes. Take a visual tour of some of the Big Apple’s most famous attractions.
Lonely Planet Images	Hawaiian paradise The Hawaiian Islands are the perfect vacation destination for travelers of all types.
Lonely Planet Images	National spectacles Nearly 400 national parks can be found all across America, and feature breathtaking vistas, rock formations millions of years old, and more.

Verified hopes to expand the Orlando program to 20 airports by the end of the year. With the TSA’s recent approval of the shoe scanner developed in a cross-licensing agreement between GE Security — a subsidiary of General Electric Co. — and Australia-based QRSciences, Verified hopes many additional travelers will sign up at the $100 yearly fee.

Verified’s customers still have to walk through a metal detector and place their bags in the X-ray machine, but the company says its 30,000 Orlando customers — and another 5,000 who have signed up in advance for the programs at the four other airports — are a testament to its quicker screening process.

Simon Bedford, QRSciences vice president of business development, said the shoe scanner applies old technology — quadrupole resonance —that was used in the Vietnam War to detect land mines.

Story continues below ↓

advertisement | your ad here

The shoe scanner uses AM radio waves to resonate the molecules inside shoes, creating a frequency that is unique to particular types of molecules. The device then compares the frequency to those of a range of substances, deciding if the traveler is just wearing shoes or something that could be an explosive. Al-Qaida operative Richard Reid tried to blow up a Paris to Miami flight using a shoe bomb in 2001, but he couldn’t get it lit before a flight attendant and passengers subdued him.

Citing security reasons, GE Security and QRSciences won’t talk specifically about how the technology stacks up against the standard procedure of removing shoes and placing them on the X-ray machine. They point to TSA approval as validation.

“We’re confident that the shoe scanner can screen shoes,” said TSA spokesman Christopher White, declining to elaborate further.

ALSO ON THIS STORY

But it may be awhile before most travelers step onto the new shoe scanner.

First, GE Security’s kiosks cost $200,000 each, making them too expensive for the government to buy for widespread use. Farr, the analyst, said the kiosk itself may never be adopted for use on the general public, but its components will likely be deployed piecemeal.

Another obstacle, Farr said, is the current requirement of a background check and biometric card. For the mass traveling public to accept the process, the machines will need to be able to read driver’s licenses, which differ from state to state. For the system to work, a traveler’s card needs to work at every machine at every airport.

Another consideration: The widespread use of technology may threaten the jobs of many TSA screeners — a difficult pill to swallow for a government bureaucracy trying to compete for funding, Farr said.

< Prev | 1 | 2