Bulletproof Glass Pods Add More Security to Airports

• By Ginger Hill
• Dec 02, 2013

Belts and shoes must be removed; laptops must be taken out of bags and placed into a bin along with carry-on luggage to be shoved through a scanning device to make sure nothing suspicious is hiding within. And, that’s just to get into the airport. Now, after landing, some airports are requiring people to walk through futuristic, bulletproof, glass pods to exit the facility.

Replacing officers at security exits, these unmanned portals act as a barrier to exit for passengers attempting to leave the airport after landing to prevent re-entry into secure areas and to keep others from entering through airport exits. Travelers simply step into one of these elevator-sized cylinders and wait as a door slides closed behind them, fully encasing their body. A couple of seconds later, a different door opens on the front side as a voice instructs people to “please exit.”

(Sounds a little like taking Mario or Luigi through a warp zone in the old Mario Brothers video game to me.)

TSA is preparing to save $88.1 million during 2014 by shifting exit-monitoring duties at airport exit checkpoints, so this technology may be the answer to saving money. However, as with most security, I’m sure it could slow travelers down even though both Syracuse and Atlantic City airports, which are currently using the pods, recently reported that during high-traffic, evening hours there hasn’t been a backup of people. Maybe this is because the whole process, from entering to exiting, takes only approximately 5 seconds or maybe it’s because the pod only acts as a barrier. Whatever the reason, time could become of the essence as it is possible to equip the portals with biometric scanning technology.

I’m not too sure we've done a great job keeping the “bad” people out of airports to begin with, but now we may have to deal with security coming and going!