‘Checkpoint of the future’ takes shape at Texas airport
By Bart Jansen
USA TODAY.com
June 20, 2012
DALLAS – At a terminal being renovated here at Love Field, contractors are installing 500 high-definition security cameras sharp enough to read an auto license plate or a logo on a shirt.
The cameras, capable of tracking passengers from the parking garage to gates to the tarmac, are a key first step in creating what the airline industry would like to see at airports worldwide: a security apparatus that would scrutinize passengers more thoroughly, but less intrusively, and in faster fashion than now.
It’s part of what the International Air Transport Association, or IATA, which represents airlines globally, calls “the checkpoint of the future.”
The goal is for fliers to move almost non-stop through security from the curb to the gate, in contrast to repeated security stops and logjams at checkpoints.
After checking their luggage, passengers would identify themselves not with driver’s licenses and paper boarding passes, but by scanning fingerprints or irises to prove they have an electronic ticket.
Passengers would walk with their carry-ons through a screening tunnel, where they’d undergo electronic scrutiny — replacing what now happens at as many as three different stops as they’re scanned for metal objects, non-metallic items and explosives.
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