Airport Security Providers Under Pressure to Eliminate Queues

The pressure is on for Airport security providers to step-up technological solutions after the IATA announced its intention to eliminate queues at airports by 2020.

This year the International Air Transport Association (IATA) will run ten more trials for the initiative to implement its ‘Checkpoint of the Future Roadmap’, aimed at the elimination of queues in airports by the end of the decade.

Trials are already underway at London Heathrow, Amsterdam Schiphol and Geneva airports and involve the pre-screening of passengers, explosive detection and biometric data verification instead of traditional scanning methods.

Concerns have arisen as passenger numbers continue to grow year after year, but passenger processing has slowed by over 50% since the events of 9/11.  The new advanced security checkpoint is set to be introduced by 2014 and will speed up the process, eventually eliminating queues altogether.

“We are slowly moving toward the same alignment on security that we have achieved on safety. But we are not there yet and that concerns me greatly,” Tony Tyler, CEO & Director General of IATA, told the Ops conference in Vienna last week.

Airport security providers, such as ARINC’s PSIM solution, are already delivering biometric and automated airport security with their industry-leading technology.  ARINC provide their PSIM solution in over half the U.S. nuclear installations and are ahead of the game when it comes to mission-critical communications and biometric scanning.