New era for hand luggage: Why everything should now be much easier for passengers
Created: 11/25/2022, 12:15 p.m
By: Eric Sharp
Long queues at the security check should soon be a thing of the past.
New technology for checking hand luggage will soon be in use at Frankfurt Airport.
Frankfurt - Frankfurt Airport and the luggage - it has really not been a love affair in the past few weeks and months.
Suitcases were piling up during the summer holidays, there were simply not enough staff to handle the high volume after the end of the corona restrictions.
Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr spoke openly about the situation in an interview recently.
"The situation in the summer was bad," he told the
star
.
Because not only at the baggage claim, but also at the security check, the passengers needed a lot of patience.
But the chaos should not be repeated at Frankfurt Airport.
Airport operator Fraport is now taking a step in this direction, reports fnp.de.
In the USA, the new hand luggage scanners have been in use for some time, as here at Tampa/Florida Airport.
© Martha Asencio Rhine/Imago
Frankfurt Airport: Faster and more convenient hand luggage checks thanks to a new scanner
Fraport only announced the installation of further bagdrop machines at Frankfurt Airport in November.
"The counters are designed for hybrid use: for traditional check-in with staff, but also as a pure bagdrop counter for automatic baggage check-in," a Fraport spokesman told fnp.de.
Now it should also be made easier for passengers to carry hand luggage.
From January 2023, travelers at Frankfurt Airport can expect faster and more convenient checks using innovative baggage scanners. This was announced by Fraport on Thursday (November 24).
Frankfurt Airport: Upper limit of 100 millimeters per liquid falls
The scanners are intended to make life easier for guests, because in future they will no longer have to unpack liquids and electronic devices.
The upper limit of 100 milliliters per liquid container, which has been valid up to now, will then also fall, as the southern air authority announced to the government of Upper Bavaria.
Inexperienced passengers in particular have lost time at the checkpoints if they did not pre-sort the liquids in their hand luggage.
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The devices screen the hand luggage using the computer tomography (CT) technique known from medicine.
Instead of just a few overhead images, they deliver hundreds of images of the piece of luggage without any loss of speed, which enables three-dimensional views on the control screen and the layer-by-layer x-raying of the bag's contents.
The devices can also detect solid and liquid explosives.
The restrictions on liquids in aviation were introduced in 2006 to counteract terrorism.
Frankfurt Airport: Two test devices of the innovative hand luggage scanner in use
Two test devices are currently in use at Frankfurt Airport.
For a long time, the federal police could not bring themselves to approve the new technology, which has already been tested in the USA, but also in EU countries such as Ireland, the Netherlands and Estonia.
At the end of 2019, the federal police had declared that the devices “according to the current state of knowledge” had no operational added value.
The German aviation industry has long been demanding faster passenger checks without compromising security.
According to the airport association ADV, the current procedures tie up too many resources and represent a “serious burden both for the traveling citizen and for the economy”. “We very much welcome the new technology,” said a spokeswoman for the largest German airline, Lufthansa
dpa
.
(esa/dpa)
