New Security Lines at Midway

By Margaret Lyons in News on May 8, 2008 3:45PM

The TSA is rolling out a new security-line system at Midway. Starting today, passengers will sort themselves into three different lanes to go through the security check, based on their experience and efficiency as travelers (and packers). People who know the ropes, like business travelers, will go in the expert lane; people who are inexperienced travelers or who have kids with them go in the novice lane; and anyone who's not sure or is somewhere in between goes in the casual lane.

Airport officials say their goal is to get people through the security line in 10 minutes or less, which sounds like an effing miracle to us. Plus it'll make it easier to catch terrorists.

...[T]he new screening lanes at Midway fit well into the security agency's strategy to make the airport environment more casual and predictable for passengers so the behavior detection officers can better red-flag potential troublemakers, said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition. "If you are a terrorist, you probably are not going to go into the family line."

Because O'Hare has so many different security checkpoints, the TSA says using a similar system there is more challenging, but that they're looking into it. [Trib]