TSA Checkpoint Reopens At Atlanta With Redesigned Lanes

Hartfsfield’s security lines. Photo: Google Maps.

Some relief has come to travelers at Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport with the reopening of the Transportation Security Administration’s South Terminal checkpoint.  

The checkpoint was closed for three weeks for the installation of two new lanes that are designed to move passengers and their belongings through security more quickly. Each lane has five stations that allow five passengers to place their shoes, laptops, liquids, and other items into bins simultaneously.  

Frequent flyers who know the drill will no longer have to bear the frustration of getting stuck behind slow movers. As soon as they load their bins, they push them forward onto a conveyor belt. There’s no need to slide the bins down the table toward the x-ray machine.  

After going through the scanner or metal detector, passengers retrieve their items and drop the empty bin onto a lower-level conveyor system that returns it to the beginning of the lane. It’s somewhat similar to a bowling-ball return system.  

Since neither passengers nor TSA screeners have to carry the bins around, they are bigger than the old bins.  

The new lanes were redesigned at Delta Air Lines’ expense. Delta invested nearly $1 million in the project, which was inspired in part by a system installed last year at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. 

If the new system at Atlanta works as planned, and passengers adapt quickly to it, it could not come at a better time: the eve of Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial kickoff of the summer travel season.  

The temporary closure of the South Terminal checkpoint on May 4 inflamed an already tense situation at the airport’s TSA screening areas. Already-long lines got longer, snaking around baggage claim areas.