Hundreds of travelers today at Orlando’s McCoy International Airport were screened by machines designed to let passengers keep their shoes on their airport checkpoints. We are very much in favor of this…as no TSA agent has ever been able to tell us the last time anyone cleaned the floors.
Of fifty travellers, however, who used the brand-new ShoeScanner in a one hour period this morning, twenty-eight had to remove their shoes anyway. General Electric manufactures the machines, which were presented to the TSA for approval by Verified Identity Pass, a company that manages the Registered Traveler Program. It is intended to speed the lines for that program.
Meanwhile, British Airways and Clear Registered Traveler announced the opening of the Clear lane at British Airway’s Terminal 7 at New York’s JFK Airport. The launch there is the first outside of the test program in Orlando, and will be followed by additional rollouts next week in Indianapolis, San Jose, and Cincinnati.
All of the Registered Traveler programs at various airports will be interoperable, regardless of the managing company. In addition to experiment shoe scanners, technology will be installed allowing passengers to avoid removing outer garments, such as coats and jackets.
This program allows a traveler to pay an annual fee, submit to a series of background and other security checks, and be screened by newer equipment designed to expedite the screening process for an annual fee. Certainly worth it is you are a regular traveler, although it raises a good deal of question. We will be asking ourselves those questions as the government gradually requires passengers not paying this fee to strip down to our undergarments and let them rifle through our stuff indiscriminately while we hold up a quart-sized bag with all our potentially harmful travel shampoo bottles.
