Screening Equipment Fails in Nashville Airport

NASHVILLE, Tennessee_A software glitch knocked out the computerized X-ray machines at Nashville International Airport for five hours Friday, causing long lines and flight delays.

Whether the same problem could affect other airports was not immediately clear.

David Beecroft, who oversees security operations at Nashville for the federal Transportation Security Administration, said all U.S. international airports were alerted because the company that supplies the software for the Smiths Heimann X-ray detectors also serves several other airports.

But TSA spokeswoman Laura Uselding later said other airports were not notified because the situation in Nashville was an isolated event. The discrepancy could not be immediately resolved.

Susan Cooper, director of marketing for Smiths Detection, the New Jersey-based division of Smiths Heimann, said TSA representatives contacted them after the software glitch and told them to refer all questions to the TSA.

None of the X-ray machines at the Nashville airport's two screening checkpoints were operating when security operations were scheduled to open for the day at 3:30 a.m., Beecroft said.

Screeners searched bags by hand in Nashville while the system was down, and lines of hundreds of passengers snaked outside the terminal and into the parking areas because of the delays.