IMPROVED x-ray technology has been installed at East Midlands Airport to help detect suspect packages, after an incident two years ago in which a bomb was found on an aircraft.
The state-of-the-art "threat detection system" has been supplied to international cargo screening firm East Midlands Airport Handling, which is based at the Castle Donington airport.
The system will allow improved screening of parcels and other items which go through the airport's freight hub - which is one of the UK's busiest. The XIS-100DV has been designed specifically for the screening of non-palletised goods such as parcels and freight and is already in use in airports across the world.
It uses "dual view" tech-nology, which means it has two x-ray scanners that can generate two independent perspectives of the parcels.
Firms that do not use dual view have to screen every single piece of cargo twice, which impacts on efficiency.
The device has been supplied by Totalpost Services, which distributes the technology in the UK and Ireland on behalf of US-based company Astrophysics Inc.
David Hymers, managing director at Totalpost, said demand for the technology was prompted by an incident in 2010 when a bomb was found on a cargo plane belonging to courier company UPS at East Midlands Airport (EMA).
The aircraft had arrived at the Castle Donington airport from Cologne, in Germany, en route to Chicago.
The device, disguised as an ink cartridge, was removed from the aircraft by Leicestershire police, after the plane landed at the airport.
According to Scotland Yard, the bomb was timed to detonate seven hours after it was discovered, potentially while the jet was over the eastern seaboard of the US.
Experts said the EMA bomb, and another found in Dubai, contained at least 300g of powerful explosive PETN.
Both devices, bound for Chicago, originated in Yemen and are thought to have been made by al-Qaeda.
Mr Hymers said: "Follow-ing those incidents, the Department for Transport equivalent in the US made it mandatory that any cargo entering the country had to be screened twice, which is what our technology does.
"The machine can even throw in a few false images of suspect packages, just to check whether the person looking at the images is on the ball."
Martin Edwards, commercial projects manager at East Midlands Airport Handling, said: "We are very pleased with the performance of the new x-ray threat detection screening system" [email protected] NEW ROUTES WILL MEAN MORE JOBS BUDGET airline Ryanair is to create hundreds more jobs in the region after adding two new routes from East Midlands Airport next summer.
Yesterday, the Castle Donington airport's largest operator announced it would fly 38 routes from summer 2013.
These include new flights to Marseilles, France and the Spanish island of Menorca.
The airline also plans to increase the frequency of 17 existing routes.
Ryanair is using a formula from the Airports Council International that calculates for every 1,000 passengers it carries, one job in the region is either created or sustained.
As a result of its expanded services, the airline plans to carry an extra 460,000 passengers a year, something which it claims will create or support an extra 460 jobs in the region.
It will bring the number of people flying with Ryanair at East Midlands to about 2.3 million a year.
In order to meet its expansion plans, Ryanair will be basing another aircraft at East Midlands Airport, where it directly employs about 200 people.
The airline said this would create about 40 to 50 roles for pilots, engineers, cabin crew, handling staff and baggage staff.
Meanwhile, Monarch Airlines this week celebrated the start of flights to Lanzarote and Tenerife, from East Midlands Airport.
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