Money but no room to fit airport bomb scan

Eppley Airfield just got $1.93 million in federal stimulus money to upgrade its bomb-detection equipment, but the sophisticated luggage scanners are too big to fit behind the ticket counters.

To use the money, the airport would need to cram the equipment into the lobby or spend millions more to expand the terminal.

Airport managers say the older equipment being used to swab checked luggage for explosives is safe and effective.

Although one expert said the newer scanning equipment is more comprehensive than the swabbing technique, the Transportation Security Administration says installing the scanning machines has nothing to do with safety. It’s all about efficiency.

The new equipment requires fewer people to operate, making it more cost-effective in the long run, TSA officials say.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the federal government started a massive program to buy machines to screen checked luggage for explosives.

Eppley Airfield received swabbing equipment in 2002. With this method, a TSA screener manually swabs the luggage, and a small machine analyzes the swabs for explosive residue.

Some other airports received machines that scan an entire piece of luggage, testing the density and makeup of an object to determine whether it is explosive.

The scanners at that time were the size of minivans — too big and heavy to use at Eppley.

Over the years, scanners were placed at most of the nation’s largest airports.

Now, among large and midsize airports, only Omaha and Colorado Springs, Colo., still use swabbing machines as the only means of screening checked baggage for explosives.

“I didn’t realize that any of the airports in that size category were still doing trace detection,” said Robert Poole, a transportation expert with the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit free-market policy group based in Los Angeles. “It’s long overdue for an airport the size of Omaha” to have scanning machines.

Poole said screening all bags for explosives requires twice as many TSA workers as originally thought. That was discovered by the end of 2003, he said, after all airports had received either swabbing machines, the minivan-size scanning equipment or a combination.

A 2006 study estimated the nation could save more than $700 million in annual personnel costs if larger airports fully integrated scanning machines into baggage handling systems and if smaller airports switched to scanning equipment.

But there’s an expensive catch: Many airports, including Eppley, need renovations to make those upgrades.

Security reviews of Eppley after 9/11 and again in May concluded that the space behind the counters was too small for scanning machines. Airport officials say putting the equipment in the lobby would inconvenience passengers.

The TSA said it will attempt to work out a solution. A TSA team is scheduled to visit Eppley this month and will meet with airport and airline officials.

“We’re going to see what they have to say and try to determine if there are any options,” said Steve Coufal, executive director of the Omaha Airport Authority.

He said the current practice of swabbing bags is acceptable.

“We are very confident that the approach TSA is using is very safe and effective,” Coufal said.

Michael Kudlacz, TSA director at Eppley, said the scanning machines would have been installed before now if it had been possible.

“There’s always been an urgency,” Kudlacz said. “The (scanning) machines are faster. They save labor. But we only have so much space, unless somebody decides to change it.”

Poole said Omaha should temporarily place the luggage scanning equipment in the lobby, sacrificing customer space in order to use superior security technology sooner.

Scanning equipment, he said, can reveal timing devices or other suspicious details, while swabbing is meant only to detect explosive materials.

The TSA declined to say what other checks agents might make on swabbed luggage, but screeners have the authority to open bags for searches.

Eppley’s swabbing equipment was initially placed in the lobby, in front of the airport check-in counters. But Coufal said that caused passenger lines to back up closer to the escalators and revolving doors and made it difficult to walk through the lobby at peak times.

In 2005-06, the airport spent $730,000 just to move the swabbing equipment behind the counters. That space won’t work for the scanning machines, even though they are now smaller and lighter than the older models.

“What you can’t do is just get a piece of equipment and drop it into an existing space designed for something else,” said David Roth, director of planning and engineering for Eppley.

Roth said each scanning machine requires 16 feet by 8 feet of space, including room for the screening and maintenance crews.

Kansas City International Airport, another midsize facility, operated the larger scanning equipment in its lobbies for several years. The airport recently completed a nearly $20 million expansion to place most of that equipment behind ticket counters.

Federal grants largely funded the renovation. No stimulus money was involved, said airport spokesman Joe McBride.

Coufal and Carrie Harmon, a regional TSA spokeswoman, said they didn’t know whether federal money would be available if Eppley’s terminal were renovated.

Efforts to upgrade airport security have been hampered by the problem of accurately estimating terminal construction costs and a lack of federal funds to help pay for renovations, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The stimulus package added funds this year, but the money for Eppley is only to buy the new scanning equipment.

Larger airports that already have the explosive-scanning machines, such as Orlando International Airport, received millions of stimulus dollars to build new baggage-handling areas to better integrate the machines.

The TSA said it could not estimate how much would be saved in personnel costs if Eppley changed to the scanning equipment. Costs vary, Harmon said, depending on airport configurations and the amount of baggage screened.

Eventually, the airport’s space problem will be solved by a major expansion project. But that project is several years away.

“A new terminal would be great,” said the TSA’s Kudlacz. “You can design the security into it to accommodate the current technology. But that’s some point out into the future.”

Contact the writer:

444-1149, tom.shaw@owh.com