Counter Terror Gazette

Cabin Baggage Screening: best practices and effective technologies

17 Aug 2010

In spite of virtually every terrorist attack against civil aviation since Pan Am 103 – the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 -  being initiated via the checkpoint, the world’s authorities and airports have focused the vast majority of their financial and technical resources on checked baggage screening enhancements. Advances in explosive detection technology and the use of alternatives to standard X-ray, such as computed tomography and even Advanced Technology (AT) X-ray have only recently been applied to the far more difficult challenge of cabin bag screening.Steve Wolff looks at the challenges surrounding the screening of cabin baggage, regulatory issues and technologies as well as processes being implemented today and what approaches, might, in the future, be applied to better protect against the loopholes that exist in the screening of carry-on bags at the checkpoint.

In the United States, the investment in both cabin bag and passenger screening has been less than 10% of that spent on hold baggage screening.  Even the 2009 American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) targeted only $311 million at the checkpoint (for both bag and passenger screening) versus $689 million for checked baggage.   According to TSA sources, the bulk of this funding will go to deploy liquids scanners and Advanced Imaging Technologies (AIT) for passenger screening. This disparity is in spite of the checkpoint being terrorists’ preferred entry point and presenting substantially more complex challenges.  The checkpoint has to contend with disassembled bomb components and smaller threat masses as well as conventional weapons, none of which necessarily have to be on – or in – the same individual or bag.  This compares to hold baggage, where Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), the primary threat, must be pre-assembled and terrorists cannot select their placement to inflict maximum damage…MORE ONLINE