The Nation's Best Run Airport — and Why It's Still Not Good Enough

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What's more, the new federal agency that was supposed to help solve these problems is increasingly at odds with local airport authorities. Baumgartner and others criticize the TSA—run largely by Secret Service veterans with little aviation experience—for cluelessness, inflexibility and a bull-in-a-china-shop approach. "They may be fine folks at the TSA," says Baumgartner, "but they don't know anything about building an airport-security system or running an airport." William Pickle, a former Secret Service official who has just taken over as the TSA's top man in Denver, acknowledges the tensions. "The TSA is trying to be both a law-enforcement agency and a regulatory agency, and virtually everyone at TSA is new to aviation," he says. "It is an enormous task."

If you want to assess the state of airport security in America, Denver is a good place to start, for it is in many respects a role model. It is the newest big-city airport in the U.S. (it opened in February 1995) and by many measures the best run. Though it is the fifth busiest airport in the U.S., it has had the lowest rate of delays for four straight years. This is due partly to its five nonintersecting runways (a sixth is under construction) and equipment that makes Denver the only airport that can allow three simultaneous landings if needed. Despite well-publicized cost overruns and snafus with its baggage-handling system that delayed its opening, the airport now seems to have its financial house in order. A self-sufficient business using no city tax dollars, it had $44 million in surplus revenues last year (down from $76 million in 2000). It ranks near the top in most surveys of consumer satisfaction and has attracted six new carriers in the past year, providing fresh competition in a hub dominated by United Airlines.

Yet this exurban behemoth (larger than the city of Denver itself, it covers 53 sq. mi.), with its tentlike spires and cavernous, convention-hall interior, has its user-unfriendly quirks. Passengers who are dropped off at the airport by cab or rental-car van find themselves, for some odd reason, at the exit. To reach the ticket counter, they have to lug their bags up an escalator. The three gate concourses are connected by a train system that is fast and convenient—except when it's not working (which lately has not been very often and usually for only short periods). Unlike the terminals at Atlanta's Hartsfield, which has a similar layout, Denver's are so far apart—to give the planes more space to taxi—that passengers cannot walk between terminals even if they want to. This means that in the event of a major breakdown (like the seven-hour interruption in 1998 on what is now referred to as Black Sunday), passengers can be stranded.

Still, Denver is a more inviting place than most American airports to spend an hour or 12. After you have passed the ticket counters (centralized, helpfully, in two expansive rows on either side of the main terminal) and the two maps of America decorated with photos of oddball tourist attractions (such as the world's largest office chair, in Anniston, Ala.), you can stroll across a giant land bridge overlooking the snaking security lines. One Denver innovation has helped these lines move more quickly: express lines for passengers with only one carry-on item (a purse or small suitcase, but not both). Keith Hamlyn, a soccer-playing six-footer who travels to Florida two or three times a month for Lockheed Martin Astronautics, used to get to the airport two hours before his flight; in the past few weeks he has cut that to 90 minutes. "The first time I flew after Sept. 11, it took us 50 minutes to get through security," he says. "Lately I've been whipping right through."

The airport's command center, located on the 10th floor of a glass office building between the main terminal and the first gate concourse, offers an impressive display of state-of-the-art airport security. In the main room, a bank of 14 video monitors displays scenes from 825 cameras arrayed around the airport. Mitch Greenberg, a former paramedic, was the man in the hot seat one recent Sunday, scanning the screens and barking into a microphone to deal with each security infraction—such as a pilot's setting off an alarm at a secure door when his ID badge is misread. For major incidents—big weather problems as well as security breaches—the action shifts to the room next door, where a swat team of airport personnel are summoned around a circular conference table whose centerpiece pops up at the push of a button to give each participant a phone and computer. Denver's layout makes dealing with a security breach easier than at many airports: the train system is instantly shut down, isolating any passenger who has slipped by security (usually inadvertently) in one concourse rather than requiring the evacuation of the whole airport.

Baumgartner and his team know they have a pretty efficient system in Denver, and they aren't happy about their new federal overlords. First, there are the logistical headaches caused by the TSA's demand for 17,000 sq. ft. of office space at the airport to house what will eventually be a force of nearly 2,000 people in three rotating shifts. Baumgartner wants to charge the going rate of $72 per sq. ft.; the TSA complains that's too steep for a federal agency already stretched thin. "You can't just walk 2,000 people into an airport and put them somewhere," says Baumgartner. "You have to do a lot of work beforehand."

But the disputes have gone beyond such bureaucratic tussles. Take those baggage-screening machines. Baumgartner complains that the explosive-detection system (EDS) machines selected by the TSA are too finicky, slow and error prone. Last winter Baumgartner hired his own consultants to look into bag-screening technology, and they chose a device made by a German manufacturer, Heimann. The TSA's machine tests for density but can't tell for sure whether the suspicious mass is explosives or chocolate, whereas the Heimann machine uses a more sophisticated X-ray method that can make such distinctions by computer. The Heimann machine is capable of screening 1,000 bags an hour, compared with just 200 an hour for the EDS machine and, says Baumgartner, would cost $86 million, compared with $130 million for the TSA's system. But the TSA won't consider the Heimann machine because it has not yet been approved in the U.S. "I understand that Bruce wants to use the other technology," says Pickle, "but it has not passed the tests, and therefore it cannot be used right now."

Until there are enough EDS machines to handle all bags, the TSA wants to supplement them with smaller trace machines, microwave-size devices that can detect explosives by testing a cloth that has swabbed the luggage. But these devices have problems too. They require two to three times as much staff as the EDS machines, and security experts say they are highly unreliable unless used according to strict protocols. As TIME watched a Denver screener operate one of the trace machines, he had to punch it several times just to get it to register a clear signal.