Lambert Airport is now screening luggage checked at Terminal 1 with a new automated baggage system.
The $50.7 million assembly of ramps, conveyor belts and X-rays replaces the bomb detection machines that were installed in ticketing areas after the 9/11 terrorists attacks.
Watch below for a bag’s-eye-view of the bomb-detecting security system:
According to Lambert Airport Director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge, Terminal 1's inline system is faster for screening bags and largely invisible to passengers checking in.
"From a customer perspective, it allows customers to go back to the old days: dropping your bags off with the agents at the ticket counter and walking away to your gate,” she said.
"...it allows customers to go back to the old days: dropping your bags off with the agents at the ticket counter and walking away to your gate..."
The director says any bags that require closer scrutiny are automatically diverted to security officers for inspection. A similar baggage system for Terminal 2 is set to go live in April.
Lambert is one of more than a hundred U.S. airports that now use this type of luggage-screening system.
The Department of Homeland Security is covering roughly 90 percent of the security upgrade.
Shiny New Roof
Airport officials on Tuesday also announced a $6.7 million project to resurface the airport's vaulted roof.
The ten-month project will cover the airport’s four domes with approximately 102,000 square feet of copper bonded to stainless steel.
The installation will restore how the airport looked when it was first constructed in 1956, said Hamm-Niebruegge. “You will see as each dome is completed that nice, bright copper look,” she said.
“So, I think it'll be fun for the residents of our region and for kids who weren't here in1956 to really see it brought back to its original glamor."
The airport was designed by Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of St. Louis’ Pruitt–Igoe housing project and the former World Trade Center in New York City.
