Airports practice scanning all bags
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
They confiscated Don McPhee's soap powder yesterday, and they took a real close look at Mary White's macadamia nuts.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
With hundreds of such decisions aided by the X-ray eyes of hulking gray CTX 5500DS Invision baggage-screening machines, the airline industry practiced at Honolulu International Airport and across the country to meet its first major anti-terrorism deadline.
Passengers place their checked luggage onto an X-ray machine at the Northwest Airlines check-in area.
Passengers should not encounter any additional delays tomorrow, the airlines said, as they start screening every bag on every airplane, or at least matching them to someone who has boarded.
United Airlines, Hawai'i's biggest carrier, said most passengers will notice little change in procedures and should continue to arrive 90 minutes ahead of domestic flights and two hours before international flights.
Aloha and Hawaiian airlines said they still recommend that passengers arrive at the airport 90 minutes before interisland flights.
Honolulu Airport Manager Stanford Miyamoto said Hawai'i is in better shape than other states, because local FAA security manager Allen Agor has brought more explosive-detection machines here than to any other airport in the country.
There were at least seven in plain view yesterday, and others believed to be behind the scenes.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said the 160 explosives-detection system machines available nationwide are not enough, so airlines will use other methods to comply with the law.
The FAA says it will require 2,000 such machines to screen every bag on every flight — a goal Congress wants met by year's end.
In the meantime, Mineta said yesterday, baggage will be matched to passengers, at least on originating flights. "Computers will screen passengers, and passengers will be screened for weapons, often multiple times."
More bags will be sniffed by dogs, screened by explosive trace detectors and manually searched, he said in a speech to the industry's Transportation Research Board in Washington, D.C.
It was the CTX (computer tomography x-ray) machine at Northwest Airlines that spotted the plastic Nestle's tea bottle containing Don McPhee's soap powder yesterday.
"Sorry, sir," CTX operator Michael Palacag said, "that won't be allowed aboard the plane."
McPhee, of Australia, said he'd been planning on using it to do laundry on a cruise around South America.
It may have been the salt on White's macadamia nuts that set off the nearby explosives-detection trace machine, which sniffs a variety of chemical compounds.
"I had a hard time packing this all on the 29th," said White, en route home to Des Moines, Iowa. "But better safe than sorry."
Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.
