Denver International Airport is one of the first in the country to install new automated security lines that are designed to make airports safer and allow travelers to move through the checkpoint more efficiently.
The TSA is testing the new technology before potentially making it part of the DIA’s reconstructed Great Hall.
The two new screening lanes have automated conveyor belts that move bins into the X-ray machine tunnel, and return the bins to the front of the security checkpoint.
Carry-on bags that have a prohibited item are automatically diverted, allowing travelers to continue through the process uninterrupted.
The bins this system uses are 25 percent larger than typical bins.
"It's inevitable, if you're like me, when you get into a line at a bank or something, you always pick the wrong line,” Larry Nau, TSA federal security director, said. “This here, you no longer have to do that. And it will be a break from our culture from U.S. where people line up and they're afraid to cut in front of people. This here provides a natural acceptance and invitation to come up, ‘this spot is open, I can come up and start to relinquish myself from my property, or divest it."
The other goal of the new system? Allowing officers to spend more time looking for threats and less on the manual labor of moving bins around the security checkpoint.
