A man who was having his shoes checked for explosive residue and left in the middle of the inspection forced the closing of LaGuardia Airport in Flushing, NY Friday. The TSA closed the terminal and evacuated it, forcing every passenger to go  through security again. After a long and fruitless search with security dogs without any success, the airport reopened Friday evening.

Authorities stopped looking for the man early Friday evening after conducting an extensive search for him in the terminal, causing flight delays into Friday evening.
“We suspect that he left the checkpoint under the impression that his screening was complete,” TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said. “The fact that the machine alarmed should not be a cause for concern as some commonly found substances can set it off.”
Outgoing flights at Delta’s terminal D were immediately halted after the man walked away. About an hour later, at 3:48 p.m. authorities evacuated the secure area of the terminal beyond the checkpoints while searching for the man using canine police units. via wnbc.com

Atlanta Hartsfield  Jackson International Airport is getting the big clean up. The airport has  become run down in the eyes of its general manager Ben DeCosta, and he has initiated a new program to rally all of the employees to raise their standards in keeping the airport clean.

He recently flew halfway around the world to be dazzled by the white-glove cleanliness of the airports in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Seoul, South Korea, only to return to be ashamed by the state of Hartsfield-Jackson.

“I came back and I mentioned to my staff that I was embarrassed. The comparison was stark,” DeCosta said.

He invited his wife, Milly, to take a Sunday evening stroll through Hartsfield.

Brandishing his digital Casio EXLIM camera (which he usually keeps in his pocket to document events at the airport, including interviews with reporters), DeCosta and his wife spent three hours photographing Hartsfield’s failures at being a world-class international airport.

Their snapshots included doors that needed painting and trash left by passengers. His wife even photographed problems in the women’s bathrooms.

I wish Ben DeCosta well on this project. I have never been a big fan of his since his work at both Newark and Atlanta’s airports have been a history of huge construction projects that do very little and spend lots of money. Newark was a mess when he left, and Atlanta has been a mess since he arrived.

But  if he can clean up  the airport, he may redeem himself in my eyes a little.

Privatization of airports is one of the smartest things a city can do. It creates a profit incentive for the airport and in doing so it makes the airport much more responsive to the needs of its customers. Chicago is thinking of leasing Chicago Midway Airport to a private company, and could reap a financial windfall for the city.

The one drawback to these deals happening is that the airport is a huge patronage opportunity for the politicians. When the mayor can give jobs and concessions to their patrons, they tend not to want to get rid of this as it does help them get re-elected. When the airport goes private, the operator determines staffing and concessions. That is a huge amount of power to give away.

The possibility of privatizing control of the airport is one idea being considered to try to bring more money to the city, Dana Levenson, Chicago’s chief financial officer, told the newspaper.
“Does it end up in a transaction? We don’t know. Yet, we have to be considering any and all possibilities,” Levenson said.
Legislation that passed the Illinois Senate earlier in the week could help clear the way for leasing out the city’s second largest airport, a spokeswoman told Reuters late Friday.via  Yahoo! News.

This one can be put in the very scary file. Security cameras and listening devices were found in the security areas of the Guam International Airport. That would be expected, but they were not installed and operated  by the Airport Authority, Police, or Customs Officials. To be honest, no one knows who installed them and for what purpose.

A tip from U.S. Customs led Guam airport agency and local customs officials to numerous surveillance cameras and listening devices hidden in security-sensitive areas at the airport’s arrival area yesterday.

The two agencies’ top officials said they were unaware the devices had been installed, including in areas where arriving passengers and their bags and other belongings are checked.

The FBI has been notified, Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency Director Rick Blas said. Although he does not know if anything has been compromised, Blas said it is possible that the confidentiality of individuals being inspected and interviewed by customs officers may have been breached. If the information was breached, Blas said, the civil rights of passengers might become an issue.
There also may have been monitoring video and audio or narcotics arrests, he added.”The breach of that facility and integrity is of great concern to me,” Blas said. He said customs operations will not necessarily change because of the discovery, but local customs will continue investigating. via www.guampdn.com

A rough day out at the airports in the last couple of days:

• A woman ran through a security checkpoint at George Bush Intercontinental Airport on Wednesday, prompting authorities to close the terminal and re-screen all the passengers who were in the terminal.
• Two planes came within a few hundred feet of each other last week when a controller at Los Angeles International Airport mistakenly cleared three planes for the same runway, officials said.
• An Alaska Airlines flight returned to Portland International Airport Tuesday morning after the cabin’s oxygen masks dropped 15 minutes into a flight to Denver.

It looks like the  security issues and discomfort we  have experiencing in the United States are being felt over in England. Heathrow International Airport in London is adding additional security measures and it is annoying both business travelers and travel agents with the additional time it is taking to get through security. So much so that the travel agents are recommending to the business traveler to use different airports that have lighter security.

“Some passengers are getting very annoyed indeed,” one airline told Times Online. “It is taking them a lot longer to get through security than they have been accustomed to.” According to airline sources, queues to pass through security are taking as long as one hour at peak times. Times Online.

While the  airlines are seeing losses with high fuel prices and intense competition, individual airports are doing very well in traffic volume. Since the airports charge revenue by passenger arrivals and departures and gate fees, it means that the airports revenues are not dependent on the airlines success, but just the passenger volume. Las Vegas has had a particularly good year on 2005.  

“We are seeing tremendous volume of passengers into our airport,” McCarran Airport spokeswoman Elaine Sanchez said. “It is a good thing for our community.”  McCarran saw 44.3 million passengers come through its gates last year, a 6.8 percent increase from the previous year and a 22 percent jump from 2003.

These large increases follow a few years of flat growth following the terrorist attacks in 2001. After a few months of double-digit declines following 9/11, the airport rebounded to post only a .5 percent decline in 2002, followed by a 3.6 percent increase in 2003 before the two years of record-setting growth. Via Las Vegas Business Press

The pointing of a laser at an airplane is a felony, and in Detroit there were more than a dozen incidents that have occurred in the last couple of days. If the laser hits a pilots eyes, it could harm their vision and cause either temporary or permanent blindness. If this happened when walking down the street, it would be dangerous enough, but when done to the a pilot flying a plane in for landing with hundreds of passengers, the damage could be disastrous.

The incident occurred in the Dearborn and Dearborn Heights areas, where 16 pilots reported seeing the laser pointer lights near the tower at Metro Airport, Local 4 reported.
Apparently the lights were being flashed at planes on their final approach into the Detroit area. The first instance reported was near the Home Depot in Dearborn Heights, then a short time after the light originated from a neighborhood near Telegraph Road and Lehigh Road, according to police.
Police say shining a laser pointer at a plane is a felony and could lead to a dangerous situation.
“Just be a small laser, when it goes up into the cockpit, then it really can blind the pilot,” said Capt. Lee Gavin, Dearborn Heights Police Department. via Yahoo! News.

In an attempt to get passengers flying out of one of the smaller regional airports in North Carolina and not driving to Raleigh Durham International Airport, US Airways has cut the airfare by 25 to 40 percent on all flights going out of Piedmont Triad International Airport. This will be interesting to see if it is a trend by US Airways and other airlines to boost regional airport traffic by lowering fares at the smaller airports and bring people back, as opposed to having them drive to the larger airports that offer direct flights.

US Airways announced Monday that it was cutting fares on flights to 33 cities from Piedmont Triad International Airport. The airline has 23 daily flights from PTI, making it the airport’s largest carrier.

Prices on advanced purchases have been cut an average of 25 percent while walk-up fares, the most common for business travelers, have been cut an average of 40 percent.
The new fare structure took effect immediately, Feb. 13. Among the cities with discounted fares are Chicago, Boston, Dallas and Phoenix. Most of the flights will go through the US Airways hubs in Charlotte or Philadelphia.

US Airways to offer discounted fares from PTI - 2006-02-13.