More attention should be paid to the human factor in airport security

By Prof. Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum*

Kirschenbaum Consulting’s recent study showing that passengers of charter flights are responsible for the majority of extra costs arising from delays in airport security checks won extensive media coverage.

Following the publication of the findings, we received many comments to which I will try to relate in this post. Our evidence about charter versus commercial flight passengers as a crude measure for gauging security costs is only one highlight of a complex and cutting edge research program carried out by the BEMOSA (Behaviour Modelling for Security in Airports) Project we were involved in.

The decision to highlight these results stems from an obvious need to reevaluate the role that passengers play in airport security. Until now, most studies of passenger “throughput” have been classical in their objective – reducing the time it takes to “process” passengers.

This is actually in line with how airports are designed, primarily as mass production units that regard passengers as passive cogs in the service of engineering design and logistic optimization.

The introduction of security technology was a natural outcome of such a perspective as it once more marginalized both employees and passengers by minimizing the need for what we know as the complexity of making security decisions under conditions of uncertainty. This complexity actually showed itself in the fact that close to 40 percent of the employees in airports dispersed throughout Europe actually bent, broke, ignored or even went against the security rules and protocols.

What we did was introduce passengers into the security decision-making process from a human factor perspective. Anyone going through the checkpoint screening process cannot but help but recognize that some passengers interact with the security employees. We noted that while some were very passive and almost automatically acquiesced to orders to open bags or leave items behind, we also noted that others acted differently, and there were those who even argued. Giving away a $100 bottle of prize whisky was not taken lightly.

All this negotiating took time, and given the practical and ethical problems involved in interviewing passengers during this screening process, we were restricted in distinguishing passengers by the type of flight they were about to board – commercial or charter. The costing was a relatively easy exercise and we simply made the association between the two.

The point of showing how charter and commercial passengers can have a direct impact on security costs was obvious. Nevertheless, the more important point was that we only exposed the tip of the iceberg in understanding passenger behavior and its impact on airport security.

This in itself could bring about a “revolution” in making the passenger experience more positive and in doing so benefit the commercial interests of airports and perhaps change the perspective of airports as mass processing production lines to service providers. In both cases, everyone wins.

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 *Prof Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum, founder and CEO of Kirschenbaum Consulting.

Prof. Kirschenbaum to present BEMOSA's finding at Passenger Terminal Expo 2013

Prof Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum, founder and CEO of Kirschenbaum Consulting will present the findings of BEMOSA's first in-depth study of European airports at the Passenger Terminal Expo, which will take place on April 9–11, 2013, in Geneva Switzerland.

Prof. Kirschenbaum will hold a presentation on April 11 at 12:30 as part of the "Aviation Security, Border Control & Facilitation" session.

The presentation, titled "Taken For a Ride: Does Airport Security Really Work?" will focus on the results of a study conducted by EU-funded project BEMOSA (Behaviour Modelling for Security in Airports), which was headed by Prof. Kirschenbaum. The findings are based on over 500 interviews and 700 ethnographic observations held at airports across Europe.

At the event, Prof. Kirschenbaum will present a newly developed behavior model that aims to describe how people make security decisions in the face of reality during “normal routine” and crises. The results of the study indicate that the current design of airport security does not take into account the social behaviour of passengers and employees. BEMOSA results show that the processing within an airport's security framework, founded on rational and logical systems, is failing.

The audience will be presented with the reality of employee security decision-making behaviour in airports across Europe. This forms the basis for reexamining the basic concepts involved in airport security, and the alternative means that can be implemented to enhance it.

Prof. Kirschenbaum will also participate in a panel discussion on April 11 at 12:55 titled "Accounting for the human factor in aviation security." Other participants at the panel include Claudio Mauerhofer, Security Coordinator, at the Federal Office of Civil Aviation FOCA, Switzerland; Klaus Heindrichs, Project Manager, Cologne Bonn Airport and Uta Kohse, Managing Partner, Airport Research Center GmbH.

33–50% of charter passengers carry prohibited items

Passengers of charter flights are responsible for the majority of extra costs arising from delays in airport security checks, according to scientific research conducted by Kirschenbaum Consulting.

The results indicate that while only 10–15% of scheduled passengers carried prohibited items, 33–50% of charter passengers did so. Moreover, while only 10% of regular flyers were re-examined by security employees, 33% of charter passengers needed another check.

“Security has become a key cost component in airports. Passenger behavior and its significance to airport profits should not be underestimated,” said Prof Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum, founder and CEO of Kirschenbaum Consulting. “We can clearly see that delays at the screening check point are directly related to the type of passenger involved. This requires paying more attention to the role that the human factor can have on security costs.”

The findings, that are based on a one-year in-depth study held at a regional European airport, also showed that, while charter passengers accounted for less than 50% of overall traffic, they were responsible for an additional 35% of the overall security costs.

Even though the majority of passengers pass through the security process very quickly, passengers who negotiate with the security personal consume close to 80% of the time spent passing through screening.

Kirschenbaum added that it could be conjectured that charter passengers were more likely to purchase holiday gifts and, given their lower sensitivity to security, more likely to be stopped for possessing prohibited items.

Airports estimate that it should take 20–30 seconds for a regular passenger to pass through the security screening process. The research showed, however, that it took those ignorant of the rules one to two minutes.

The study also showed that 85–90% of the prohibited items that delayed processing were liquids, with the remaining 10–15% consisting of knives, manicure files, paralytic sprays, cigarette lighters, imitation children’s toys and tools.

Reality sets the tone for new TSA airport security regulations

By Prof. Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum*

It has finally started. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has started to reduce the number of prohibited items that passengers need to deposit at security screening points before being allowed to board flights.

True, the items include such "dangerous" weapons as pocketknives, golf clubs and waffle ball style bats but it is a step in the right direction.

Source: The TSA Blog

The recent announcement is a decision that reflects a much more realistic assessment of airport security as the prohibited items regulators put on the "hit list" were reactions to a period when hijacking was the easiest and most effective way for terrorists to get attention. Now, with double pilot cabin doors, your trusty penknife or golf clubs will not do very much damage. Nevertheless, the other reality of airport security – namely bottom line profits is also at play here.  I would even argue that it played a critical role in bringing about this small step toward a more rational security policy.

In this case, two 'bottom-line' factors are at work in making these decisions and ensure airports remain financially viable: one magic bullet is increasing passenger "throughput". Logically, getting ever-increasing numbers of passengers in shorter times through the security screening process reduces security labor costs. It may also make passengers more amiable to purchase more goods and services (and of course cause less delayed flights).

How do you expedite this process? By simply keep reducing the number of prohibited items that need to be searched for, the time allocated in the queuing and searching process can be substantially reduced.

Let's look at this argument in terms of empirical evidence recently published from the BEMOSA project. This encompassed a detailed ethnographic "time-motion" study of an airport in addition to detailed interviews of security employees at another eight airports across Europe. It clearly showed that security screening is a social platform for negotiating between passenger and security employee when prohibited items show up.

This negotiating can move from outright refusal to give up an item to trying to convince the security employee to let the item pass. So much for rule compliance and the triumph of technology.

More interesting is that about 85-90 percent of the prohibited items that delayed processing were liquids; the remainder of confiscated items (10-15%) included knifes, manicure files, paralytic sprays, cigarette lighters, imitation children toys such as guns and knifes and in rare cases tools. And of course, those hidden pocketknives (more likely loose change or house keys) led to the necessity to have every third passenger retrace their steps and go through the metal detectors at least one more time.

A closer look at the passengers who were holding things up during the negotiating stages found them to be predominantly composed of "holiday makers" heading for a charter flight!

What this all suggests is that eliminating prohibited items by administrative fiat is too simple a solution to a very complex social and organizational problem. Dealing with passengers as people and not passive cogs in a mass production processing system requires looking at hard behavioral evidence and putting it within the social context of airport security. By looking at the human factor, security can be enhanced just as it has been done so through sophisticated technology.

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 *Prof Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum, founder and CEO of Kirschenbaum Consulting.

Can a remote queue management system for airport security work in reality?

By Prof. Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum*

A recent report indicates that Warsaw Chopin is the first airport in the world to launch a remote queue management system aimed at controlling queue lengths and reducing the waiting time for security checks. The arrangement of the queuing configuration that directs the flow of passengers into the security screening path will automatically and seamlessly change according to queuing pressures.

Source: Warsaw Chopin site

No more unnecessary waiting in line, no more frustrated and angry passengers. Remote control at its finest. And, no need for human intervention or interference: no need for security personal to mix with passengers, argue with them, make judgments, be friendly or explain long delays. Information will now be relayed by sensors to software that will take this hazardous and annoying part of the security process and sanitize it. Heaven on earth!

But, if we look a little closer at the basic idea of continuing the “automation” of airport passenger processing by minimizing any contact or decisions by employees, we should also take into account the fact that passengers are not mindless, individual robots. Nor are they passive cogs in a mass processing factory.

Just picture the possibility of a family consisting of parents, children and grandparents on their way to enjoy a family vacation. They are waiting in line together, when all of a sudden the posts or guidance tapes change configuration and they find themselves split up. Great for optimizing the flow of passengers but terrible for the family members. And what can we expect regarding their probable behaviour?

Those posts and tapes will likely be ignored in favour of family togetherness. And others seeing this will also likely do the same. The technology does not accept that passengers are not cattle that blindly follow the chosen path.

So, we are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, we have sophisticated technology that should reduce queuing time, facilitate throughput and reduce costs and passenger dissatisfaction. On the other, we have passenger social behaviour which, to the airport designer, seems not only unreasonable but downright irrational. Complicate this situation with the fact that passengers are a very diverse population culturally, socially and economically. Some have experience in airport travel while others do not. Some arrive at airports as family units and others do not. Some are on charter flights and others on commercial scheduled flights. All these differences among passengers are simply not accounted for in the security processes.

A good example of this diversity emerged from the BEMOSA (Behavior Modeling for Security in Airports) Project. Close observations of passengers during the screening process discovered distinct stages where passengers and security employees actually negotiate over items screeners decide are prohibited to bring onboard.

These stages range from accepting the decision to more time-consuming (and costly) stages of negotiating (and even arguing and refusal). While this analysis was done to gauge the actual costs of screening security, what emerged was that by characterizing passengers on the simple basis of being a “charter” or “scheduled” flight passenger, we could predict how the negotiation process would develop.

Here is a clear case where passengers do make a critical impact on security processes. So, despite all the efforts to eliminate the human factor in airport security through greater use of sophisticated technology, airport security designers still have to face the unpleasant fact that passengers are the life blood of air transportation. Paying attention to them rather than ignoring them is rule number one for commercial survival.

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*Prof Alan (Avi) Kirschenbaum, founder and CEO of Kirschenbaum Consulting.