UK and the Future of Airport Passenger Checkpoints

Implications: No simple solution for improving the Passenger Screening Checkpoints at airports is likely. The UK Government is under pressure from airports and airlines to relax constraints currently in effect, even though the threat level remains high. The UK Government is testing (off-line) combinations of new technologies aimed at optimizing and replacing the current central search/ passenger checkpoint process within the next couple of years.

Analysis: Recent enhancements in security within the UK have been piecemeal efforts (such as removing shoes and laptops, addition of compact X-rays for shoes and occasional screening by backscatter X-ray whole body imaging systems).  The UK Government has a program to evaluate new technologies and assess how to combine and integrate them into a more cohesive and effective system-of-systems.  Such work is currently being performed at a UK Government test facility and includes new types of scanners for both bags and passengers.

The UK government's goal is to have a completely revamped passenger screening checkpoint (also known as Central Search or Search Cone) in the 2 - 3 year timeframe.  After completing lab trials, Airports and airlines will trial the combined system(s) and will likely have a say in the final configuration of such a system.  For several years, airports have been trialing the constituent technologies, such as millimeter wave and backscatter X-ray passenger scanners.  The final approach likely would be adopted in cooperation with other European governments to ensure security consistency.

Unlike hold baggage screening, where the rest of the world sharply differed from the US approach to screening, there is more effort (via international organizations like ICAO, European Civil Aviation Conference) to achieve a more harmonious system, at least from the government perspective.  The US has recently announced that it will ramp up its own trials of passenger scanning systems, similar or the same as those being considered in Europe. It remains to be seen how the airports and airlines (on both sides of the Atlantic) will react and ultimately influence a system that we all will have to put up with.