Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]

  LAS VEGAS (AP) — Federal airport security officials unveiled passenger
  self-screening lanes Wednesday at busy Harry Reid International Airport
  in Las Vegas, with plans to test it for use in other cities around the
  country.

  “How do we step into the future? This is a step,” said a system
  designer, Dimitri Kusnezov, science and technology under secretary at
  the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “The interface with people
  makes all the difference.”

  The Transportation Security Administration checkpoint — initially only
  in Las Vegas, only for TSA PreCheck customers and only using the
  English language — incorporates a screen with do-it-yourself
  instructions telling people how to smoothly pass themselves and their
  carry-on luggage through pre-flight screening with little or no help
  from uniformed TSA officers.

  “We want to avoid passengers having to be patted down,” said John
  Fortune, program manager of the Department of Homeland Security’s
  [1]“Screening at Speed” program and a developer with Kusnezov of the
  prototype.

  Instead of a boxy belt-fed device using a stack of gray trays, the
  futuristic-looking baggage and personal belongings inspection system
  looks like a scaled-down starship medical magnetic resonance imaging
  machine. It uses an automated bin return that sanitizes trays with
  germ-killing ultraviolet light between users.

  Travelers step into a separate clear glass body scanning booth with a
  video display inside showing how to stand when being sensed with what
  officials said is the type of “millimeter wave technology” already in
  use around the country. A reporter found it sensitive enough to
  identify a forgotten handkerchief in a pocket. He did not have to
  remove his shoes.

  “Really, one of the main aims here is to allow individuals to get
  through the system without necessarily having to interact 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.”

  Nationally, nearly all passengers who pay to enroll in the TSA PreCheck
  program pass through screening in 10 minutes or less, agency spokesman
  R. Carter Langston said, while regular traveler and carry-on screening
  takes about 30 minutes.

  Peach said eight uniformed TSA officers might be needed to staff two
  lanes of the new system, compared with 12 officers in lanes today.

  However, Kusnezov and Karen Burke, TSA federal security director in
  Nevada, said agents including union members would just be freed from
  hands-on screening to focus more attention on broader security
  concerns.

  “No one is going to lose their job,” Burke said.

  Fortune declined to estimate the cost of designing the system, but he
  said the type of scanners used were similar to ones already deployed
  around the country.

  Officials said they’ll time how quickly travelers pass through the
  prototype during evaluations this year.

  Testing is being done at a unique-in-the-nation “innovation checkpoint”
  that TSA unveiled in 2019 in a sprawling international arrivals
  terminal that opened in 2012 at Harry Reid airport. It already features
  screening lanes with instruction displays and estimated wait times.

  “This change in technology is for people who want to get through a
  checkpoint faster,” said Keith Jeffries, a 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’ll be a great step, but I anticipate it
  will be for the experienced passengers.”

  Jeffries, in an interview on Tuesday with The Associated Press,
  compared the new system to self-checkout lanes that were introduced in
  the 1980s and are now common at supermarkets across the nation. He
  recalled that some shoppers initially avoided scanning their own
  purchases.

  “It’s going to take time to educate the public,” he said of the TSA
  screening lanes. “You’re going to have a new generation of travelers
  that just wants to get through with the least amount of hassle and
  delay. I think eventually we’ll see more and more of them.”

  Harry Reid International Airport was the seventh-busiest passenger
  airport in the U.S. in 2022, ranked by Airports Council International
  behind New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. In 2023, the
  Las Vegas airport handled a new [2]record of 57.6 million arriving and
  departing passengers.

  The Transportation Security Administration reported its busiest day
  ever at the airport last month, screening [3]nearly 104,000 travelers
  and their luggage as they headed for airline flights Feb. 12, the day
  after the NFL Super Bowl was played at Allegiant Stadium.

____

  Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Washington, D.C.,
  contributed to this report.

References

  1. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-03/24_0304_st_ScreeningatSpeed_March2024.pdf
  2. https://news.harryreidairport.com/press-release/las-shatters-annual-passenger-record-with-57-6-million-in-2023/#:~:text=LAS Shatters Annual Passenger Record,2023 | Harry Reid Airport - News
  3. https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2024/02/13/coordinated-tsa-security-operations-success-super-bowl-lviii