LITTLE ROCK — The state’s largest airport is weighing whether to purchase its own full-body scanner as part of a larger effort to reduce security checkpoint wait times, other parts of which were implemented last week in advance of the busy Memorial Day holiday weekend.
After hearing from passengers and the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission, the staffs at the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field and the U.S. Transportation Security Agency added features to funnel passengers through the security checkpoint more quickly.
The features included an extra lane devoted to families with small children, frequent flyers, people with disabilities, and passengers who arrive late and might miss their flights, the commission chairman, Jim Dailey, said in an interview.
On Friday, when more than 7,500 passengers were expected to go through the terminal, the Transportation Security Agency had four officers checking identification, he said. The agency normally has one and, more recently, two.
“The maximum wait, I heard, was 25 minutes,” Dailey said. “We’re making progress. All I can say is we have to stay the course.”
Complaints about the long lines and waits came after the passenger screening area underwent a $1.3 million expansion late last year. The 3,000-square-foot expansion is the first to be completed as part of the $67 million first phase of the airport’s terminal redevelopment.
The remade area was expected to sharply reduce the lines and includes a security lane added to the four already in place and left room for two full-body scanners. The machines can detect nonmetallic threats, such as liquid explosives, without X-rays or creating an image of the passenger’s body.
At the time they were installed, some hope was expressed that they would help quicken the pace through the screening process. Experience shows that hasn’t been the case, but the Transportation Safety Administration has insisted the upgraded technology hasn’t increased the wait times, either.
Meanwhile, passenger traffic since Jan. 1 has increased 10 percent over the same time last year and airlines, partly in response to the surge in travel, have switched from smaller regional jets to mainline jets that are double the capacity of the smaller aircraft they replaced. That means, at times, 400 to 500 people could be waiting to take a flight at peak times during the week.
But Dailey said “we’re not looking for excuses.”
Meanwhile, the airport also is pondering purchasing its own full-body scanner, officially known as an advanced imaging technology screening machine, Shane Carter, an airport spokesman, confirmed. The Transportation Safety Administration, which has final say over what happens in the passenger screening area, provided the two now in the security checkpoint at no cost to the airport.
“We’re looking at possibly reconfiguring the checkpoint to handle increased capacity, which may lead to an additional [screening machine],” Carter said in an e-mail. “We’re in the beginning stage of this process, which will require assistance from our architect. Nevertheless, the airport is committed to working with TSA to do everything that we can to improve our passengers’ experiences.”
The priority access lane and other features available Friday helped shepherd about 1,200 people during the airport’s peak morning rush between 4:30 a.m. and 7 a.m., Carter said. “The total average processing time was 23 minutes during peak time.”
That time was quicker than the waiting times commission members have been hearing from passengers, who say the process has become too unwieldy for an airport as small as Little Rock’s and doesn’t compare to the quicker times they experience at larger and busier airports.
In 2010, the latest year for which figures are available, the Federal Aviation Administration ranked Clinton National as the nation’s 83rd busiest airport with 1,097,403 passenger boardings.
“Nobody is as slow as Little Rock,” said John Renick of Little Rock, who in recent months has flown to Oakland, Las Vegas, Atlanta, New York, Tampa, Baltimore and Manchester, N.H., for his wholesale shoe business. “It’s because they only have one screening lane open, and it’s ridiculous.”
Another frequent traveler, Steve Roberts, also of Little Rock, said the reason was simple for the long lines: The Transportation Security Administration tries to steer most passengers through its two full-body scanners, leaving only two lanes available where, before the scanners were there, the agency had operated three and sometimes four lanes.
“I’ve never seen the third [lane] open since they got” the full-body scanners, he said. “The key is the scanners. That’s where the bottleneck is.”
To hear Roberts tell it, the airport is developing a reputation. On a trip to Miami, when someone learned he was from Little Rock, Roberts said, they mentioned the long lines at the airport. “It’s hurting the city.”
Sari Koshetz, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, noted the passenger screening area now has five lanes where, before the improvements, it had four. In addition to the full-body scanners, it still has three walk-through metal detectors, the same number as before, but five X-ray units, one more than before the remodel.
“We provide world class security in part by using state-of-the-art technology, such as Advanced Imaging Technology,” Koshetz said. “We work with the airport and airlines to staff up and keep as many lanes open as possible during peak times.”
But she added that the agency’s goal remains “to send as many passengers as possible through” the full body scanners.
Other airports similar in size to Clinton National have experienced similar problems in recent months.
Des Moines International Airport in Iowa, which is the 85th busiest airport in the nation - two places below Clinton National with 898,840 boardings in 2010 - has had waits as long as 40 minutes during peak times whereas a year ago the wait in line was usually seven or eight minutes and sometimes 10 minutes, said Kevin Foley, the airport’s assistant executive director and general manager.
“It’s not every day,” he said. “But it’s been a concern. It’s not just screening. We have increased lines in front of the ticket counter.”
The airport has two concourses with one full-body scanner for each concourse, but the Transportation Security Administration uses all four screening lanes that are available, he said.
Like Clinton National, passenger traffic has increased at Des Moines this year, up 11 percent, according to Foley. And like Little Rock, larger aircraft now serve the market. With as many as 20 outbound flights departing in a 90-minute period some mornings, “there is a constant line,” at the passenger checkpoint, he said.
The problem is “occurring at airports across the country,” he said.
His best advice? Foley tells people to follow airline admonitions to arrive at the airport at least 90 minutes before flight departure.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 05/28/2012