Salisbury Airport highlights new safety technology from TSA
SALISBURY, Md – The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has installed two new security technologies that enhance the screening capabilities of travelers and their belongings at the Salisbury-Ocean City Wicomico Regional
Airport security checkpoint. A new credential authentication technology (CAT) unit and a 3-D computed tomography scanner are now in use at the airport’s checkpoint.
Travelers first will engage with the new CAT technology at the travel document checking podium. A passenger’s ID is inserted into the unit, which confirms the validity of a traveler’s identification and flight information.
“The credential authentication technology enhances detection capabilities for identifying fraudulent documents such as driver’s licenses and passports at the checkpoint and increases efficiency by automatically verifying passenger identification,” said Christopher Murgia, TSA’s Federal Security Director for Maryland. “For example, we’ll know immediately if the ID has expired or has been altered in some fashion to change the age, address, or photo of the individual. The system will also confirm the passenger’s flight status in near real-time through a secured connection, which enables us to confirm that this traveler is ticketed to fly out of this airport today.”
“You got to love projects like this where, you know, you don’t have to design it, you don’t have to find funding for and it’s provided by someone else, yes we help facilitate that with TSA, work with them closely to get this equipment in here and just glad to have it today,” said Airport Manager Tony Rudy.
The tech also features a new dimension for baggage screening allowing operators to have a 3D view of an object in a bag, saving time that would otherwise require personnel to remove the bag and check it by hand.
“It lets me rotate the image so I can see all angles of the bag, our previous X-ray only gave you a side view in a top view, So if the bag was cluttered, we had to go into it more often,” said Shift Manager Brandon Ruff adding “now we can see exactly what’s in your bag and what should be in there and what shouldn’t be and allows us to get you in and out of security quicker.”
