Role of Baggage Scanners in Safe Travel: it's working and applications

Safety in air travel has been a high priority concern for the Indian government ever since Indian airports started facing narcotics and terrorist-related threats. Chennai Airport alone houses nearly 33,000 people and 500 aircraft movements daily. In a scenario like this, it is highly advisable to use technology to cut congestion. This will result in less time spent in waiting queues.

The definition of a hassle-free airport check-in experience is where the passengers need not take their electronic gadgets out of the bag during security checks. CT and X-ray scanners are in line to be installed at major airports of India that are capable of detecting all types of metallic, non-metallic and electronic gadgets inside the passengers’ luggage. The dual-energy X-ray inspection system by eSSL Security Systems is one such efficient baggage scanner with an enhanced capacity of up to 80 kgs. This change will certainly save time spent on long queues and also eliminate the need to carry out frisking the passengers by physical touch. 

Out of the 105 airports operating in India, 28 are classified as hypersensitive (large cities like Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, etc and regions of Jammu and Kumar) and the rest as sensitive. Every domestic airline has come up with a security group that is dedicated to aircraft security because they believe risk-based security means a lesser focus on finding bad articles with more chances of finding potentially bad people. Manpower is highly necessary but investing in some very good technological solution will ease up the entire process. Indian airports receive a 42% increase in footfall annually. 

Here is how baggage scanners work:

The scanner uses X-rays to detect the objects inside a bag as well as how dense they are. One side of the machine emits both low and high energy X-rays which pass through the baggage and hit detectors on the other side. When the X-rays pass through the bag and its contents, some of them get absorbed. Objects with a lower density like the ones made of organic material will allow more of the lower energy X-rays to pass through. And things with higher density will absorb most of the low energy X-rays and allow some of the higher energy rays to pass through. Based on the X-rays that reach the detector, the machine generates an image that shows all different objects in the bag, colored based on their densities. For example, if something is colored orange, that means it’s probably made of carbon material i. e something that contains carbon. This is important for security personnel to know because explosives tend to involve organic compounds. The security team analyzes the image for anything suspicious, like the outline of a gun or a bunch of organic material hidden inside a shoe.