At an annual meeting of Airline chiefs in Singapore, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has displayed for the 1st time a mock-up of a 3 channel passenger screening system of the future. It could be the answer for every weary air traveller, a high-tech screening system that filters passengers according to risk and scans and "sniffs" them as they walk through, taking a fraction of the time of a usual security check. Customs and immigration could also be combined at the same screening station, curbing lines and increasing time for pre-flight browsing, dining or duty-free shopping. Pre-flight screening categorizes people according to risk, which then channels them into "enhanced," a polite way of saying highest risk, "normal" and then the least risky, which is "known traveller". "It's the future we envision about 5 to 7 years from now," said IATA's global director for security and travel facilitation. "We're looking at a way of increasing security where we don't treat every passenger that has a pair toe-nail clippers as a potential terrorist. We're looking for a paradigm that is based on looking for bad people, not only bad things". Some of the technology still needs development, such as high-tech sniffing technology for traces of explosives. While it exists now, it still needs refining before it can detect traces of dangerous chemicals in passengers walking through a curtain of air. The IATA said 2.8 billion people were going to travel by air this year, rising to an estimated 16 billion by 2050. According to the IATA, those figures mean that the current screening systems and procedures have to change.
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