Enhanced security at KCI Airport could add wait time at TSA checkpoints

Have flight travel plans? Prepare for longer delays through security check points at Kansas City International Airport.

Transportation Security Administration officials on Friday announced that KCI has rolled out new enhanced security checkpoint measures that could hold travelers up a tad longer than usual on their way to the departure gate.

Travelers now have to display all electronic devices larger than a cell phone before passing through a checkpoint.

Laptops, iPads, Kindles and other electronic devices have to come out of a purse, backpack or carry-on and be placed in a bin, said Trent Rydberg, an explosives specialist for TSA. The items should be not be stacked.

Rydberg spoke to members of the media Friday morning at KCI Airport from behind a table holding several items — shoes, bottles filled with liquid, specific clothing items — that TSA agents are required to examine or reject before allowing a person to board an aircraft.

“The airport screening process is always changing,” Rydberg said, noting that the change is led by terrorist threats that arise, or through actual occurrences, such as the 2001 failed shoe bomber that occurred around Christmastime that year on an American Airlines flight out of Paris.

The latest change forcing passengers to display more than a laptop through a checkpoint is the result of a sophisticated explosive device that was built into a laptop computer and detonated on a Somali passenger jet in 2016.

TSA began implementing the enhanced security check on electronic devices in airports across the country in July 2017. KCI is just the latest airport to implement the change. And it’s likely to be in place indefinitely.

“The biggest hiccup has been wait time at the checkpoint,” said Mark Howell, TSA regional spokesman.

Before, passengers were only required to put their laptop in a bin. TSA is expanding that security measure, and Rydberg said this won’t be the last change we will see.

“It’s frustrating because we are always trying to think ahead,” Rydberg said. “What will the next threat be?”

With every new effort to thwart a threat, “a year or two down the road they come along and adopt a new one.”

But as time goes by, “travelers tend to forget the reasons for why they have to remove their shoes or their liquids,” Howell said. “But everything we do has a real-world threat attached. Our job is to put things in place to eliminate the threat. This is just an opportunity to remind people.”

This story was originally published February 23, 2018 at 2:30 PM with the headline "Enhanced security at KCI Airport could add wait time at TSA checkpoints."