New airport foot scanner has trouble scanning feet

Orlando (FL) - A new foot scanner, which premiered yesterday at the Orlando International Airport and was supposed to allow travelers to keep their shoes on when going through security, hit a few glitches, as nearly half of the scanned passengers ended up needing to put their shoes through the regular scanner as well.

The USA Today reported that about 52% of the passengers who used the ShoeScanner were told to remove their shoes, a hassle it was designed to prevent, when security officials were unable to detect whether or not explosives were inside.

According to Steven Brill, the man who owns the company behind the technology, Verified Identity Pass, the main problem was that the scanner could not scan properly when people move their feet. So presumably travelers would have to remain absolutely still when being scanned.

The scanner problems only affected a small portion of the airport’s tens of thousands of travelers because it is offered as a service to people who pay around $100 a year to receive expedited security screening. The service, which is known as the Registered Traveler program, is using Orlando as the test city. It is planned to be introduced to Indianapolis, Cincinatti, and San Jose within the next week, and recently debuted in New York’s Kennedy airport. So far these airports have not received Transportation Security Administration (TSA) approval to install the ShoeScanners.

Security screeners have focused on shoes ever since Richard Reid, an al-Qaeda operative, tried to explode a shoe bomb on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami. Reid is now serving a life sentence in the United States.