X-Ray Failure at Virginia Airport Lead to Screening Backup

Hundreds of travelers flying out of Richmond International Airport suffered through screening delays of up to an hour, more than six times longer than usual, this Thanksgiving holiday week.

The culprit was a broken-down security-screening X-ray machine at RIC, federal and airport officials said.

As of yesterday, the Capital Region Airport Commission, which operates Richmond International, had not received any complaints from passengers saying they had missed flights as a result of the delays, airport spokesman Troy Bell said.

Holdups began about mid-morning Tuesday when one of the two X-ray machines at the security checkpoint serving the airport's Concourse B went down, officials said.

The X-ray device's failure cut the checkpoint's capacity in half, Bell said, a problem that lingered until the machine was repaired and back in service around 10 a.m. Thanksgiving morning.

"That would have been post-peak, unfortunately," Bell said.

Bell estimated that about 3,000 people boarded airliners at Richmond International on Thanksgiving, and more than double that number on the day before.

During the busy holiday-travel season, the airport advises passengers to arrive at the airport at least 90 minutes before their scheduled departure time, especially on peak travel days such as the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Three of the four airlines boarding passengers on Concourse B recorded two delayed flights out of Richmond on Thursday, he said, and the fourth airline had one delayed departure because of the screening backup.

None of the flights departed more than 24 minutes late, Bell said.

After the machine's failure Tuesday, the Transportation Security Administration had dispatched a technician to Richmond by that afternoon, the airport spokesman said.

But the machine needed a part, which arrived -- by air -- late Wednesday evening, pushing the fix-it work into Thursday morning, he said.

"We expected it to be a minor repair," said Amy von Walter with the Transportation Security Administration's headquarters in Arlington County. "It was a repair that took about four hours, instead of 30 minutes."

Not only did the Thanksgiving-morning repair work take longer than anticipated, it required closing one of the checkpoint's walk-through metal detectors to gain access to the X-ray machine, Bell said.

"What was observed yesterday was the absolutely worst part of it," he said. "Shutting that walk-through metal detector down added to the problem."

TSA workers attempted to blunt the delays by screening some of the passengers traveling through Concourse B at the X-ray and magnetometers on Concourse A and then escorting the cleared travelers back to Concourse B, officials said.

"We certainly apologize," von Walter said, "for any inconvenience."

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