Kansas City, Mo — A new federal law aimed at further securing the nation's air traffic produced no unusual complaints or delays Friday at Kansas City International airport.
Some travelers afforded themselves several extra hours at the airport but passed through security checkpoints in as few as 15 minutes.
"I was stressing about it earlier this week, but they did a good job," said Lisa Richard, 40, who was taking her son to Florida for a Bahamas cruise on his 21st birthday Sunday. Spooked by reports that passengers could expect three-hour waits, Richard arrived four hours before her 12:30 p.m. flight to Orlando.
Each of the Richards' four bags were checked by hand, but, "It was fast," she said. "I was pleasantly surprised."
Starting Friday, airlines were required to check bags for explosives through at least one of four general ways:
l Bag-by-bag hand searches, apparently the method of choice of many airlines.
l Matching luggage to passengers. If a bag reached a plane but its passenger didn't, the bag was pulled off. Critics have said this method alone would not stop a suicide bomber.
l Bomb-sniffing dogs.
l Expensive explosive-detection equipment, such as the $1 million CTX 2500 x-ray-style machine used at United Airlines' ticket counter, so far the lone such device at KCI. Most airlines were expected to use similar devices by year's end.
Two other busy KCI carriers, American and Southwest, appeared to be mostly hand-searching bags and matching luggage to passengers. Business travelers were asked to unfold their laptop computers, while other guards rifled through overnight bags. Another level of screening had travelers standing rigid as guards passed metal-detecting wands over their bodies.
Airlines were reluctant to officially reveal their security measures, though see-through partitions allowed reporters to easily observe the security checks.
The lack of delays pleasantly surprised airline officials, who fully expected headaches from the new measures plus any number of routine problems, such as bad weather.
"We were anticipating a debacle today. But we've been practicing for this day, and things have been going exceedingly smoothly," said Jill Raines, a spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines in Kansas City.
KCI may have had a special advantage. Officials hoped the airport's layout a decentralized set of three ring-shaped terminals that allow travelers to walk from their cars directly to a gate would avert the kinds of delays expected at the nation's busier hub airports.
Still, travelers faced longer-than-usual lines in at least three spots: the ticket counter, the freshly erected security points, and, finally, the boarding counter.
Nick Calderone, a 26-year-old student awaiting a flight back to Boston where he attends the Berklee College of Music, stood in an American Airlines ticket line, which at the time numbered 53 travelers. About halfway through, he had already stood about 45 minutes.
"Doesn't bother me as long as I catch the flight," he said.
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