Anyone who’s traveled through an airport post-9/11 knows the misery of dealing with airport security. You’ve got employees barking what to do, the excruciating 100-milliliter liquid container rule, separate conveyor belt bins for laptops, you’re forced to expose your smelly socks to the world, and, of course, there’s the body scan and pat-down. Even certain types of clothing can get you flagged during a TSA screening. This is why it’s good that some airports in the U.S. have finally started making things easier for stressed travelers. Welcome to the TSA’s automated screening lanes, available in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dallas, Chicago, Minneapolis, Miami, Houston, Newark, Seattle, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Baltimore airports.
In a nutshell, automated screening lanes (dubbed “ASLs”) improve the part of security where your stuff passes through the CT scanners. They provide four bin-loading slots per lane rather than one, and the rollers turn automatically. Luggage and other items get shuffled off to the side automatically if there’s a no-no item in your bag, like aluminum foil, and the bins themselves are 25% larger than before. On the software side, TSA officials can also now rotate the CT scan images to get a better view of what’s inside your bags, thus increasing the safety check’s efficiency and accuracy.
While it’s unrealistic to think that such improvements will grant you an easy-breezy-cheery airport security experience, ASLs ought to at least improve safety while making your time in the queue more tolerable. But don’t rely on them to get you to your plane more quickly; it’s a smart idea to give yourself the same amount of time as usual.
What to expect from automated screening lanes
So if U.S. airports in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dallas, Chicago, Minneapolis, Miami, Houston, Newark, Seattle, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Baltimore implemented automated security lanes (ASLs), then the problem’s solved, right? Not quite. Even if you’re using one or more of these airports, there are caveats.
New York City, for example, has three airports — JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark — but the automated security lanes don’t apply to all terminals in all three airports. JFK added ASLs in 2017, but at that time, they were only in a few lanes in Terminal 4. Newark got 17 ASLs that same year, but only in Terminal C – though any upgrades at all might mitigate Newark’s double-the-average rate of TSA complaints. LAX in Los Angeles finished installing ASLs in 2018, but only in 14 out of 16 security lanes in the Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT). There were more ASLs installed in terminals 2, 3, 4, and 7, but it’s still unclear how many.
These few examples illustrate the bigger point: even if you pass through an airport that has automated screening lanes, the ASL rollout has been staggered and not universal. Plus, reporting on ASLs has been inconsistent. This is why it’s best to not assume that you’re going to use an automated lane just because you’re passing through an airport that has them. Err on the side of caution, plan to be using the old security lanes, and give yourself the same amount of time as usual. If you really want to dig further, you can try and find information on the specific terminal that you’re assigned for your flight to see if it uses ASLs.
The slow path to a smoother airport experience
