Slashdot Mirror
Airport Queuing Time Measured With Bluetooth
jones_supa writes "Helsinki-Vantaa airport has established a new method of monitoring security control queue times, utilizing phones with Bluetooth enabled. When a passenger passes through security control, the system calculates the time taken to queue and be served based on time stamps registered by the sensors. The plan is to eventually display all queuing times, which will allow busy passengers to decide whether it would be better to move to another checkpoint."
Not that would be silly !!
that if you have bluetooth on, they can track you anywhere.
so i opened this post thinking it would talk about apple airport. it does not, so i closed it w/o even reading it
While a cool idea, it's merely an extension of manual queue tracking. Give someone a time-stamped card. Record what time they get through the checkpoint, update your ticker system.
This is a great idea, assuming that your airport has multiple security checkpoints to choose from. Every airport I've flown through has one checkpoint per terminal (and no way to switch terminals without re-going through security checkpoints), or a massive single checkpoint for all terminals.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Just google for "traffic queue bluetooth".
Or until Security Theater (also known as Theater Securite' Abominable, or TSA) realizes that anyone with a cell phone turned on in the line can take surreptitious photos and videos of the screening process and therefore all cellphones must be turned off while in the security line... just as they must already be off while in customs and immigration areas.
Did it really take this kind of measurement to realize that travellers with kids might need a special line? This is in Finnland, wasn't it? Are the Finnish TSA really as dumb as the USA ones?
It's not the only application for measuring times in a queue, or other travel-related information. Transportation engineers have started using bluetooth MAC addresses for transit travel times, passenger car travel times, time-in-queue at toll booths, et c. Here's a google search on the subject, if you're curious.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=why+the+other+queue+always+moves+quicker
I reserve the right to be wrong.
The security staff at HEL are the most over zealous I have ever encountered (mind you, I've never been the USA). This is the only place that I've had to remove my handkerchief and some paper serviettes from my pockets during a pat-down and then have the snot-rag and paper x-rayed.
The security screeners seemed keen to touch-up anyone that set off the metal detector, and the queues were quite long with the backlog
This tech has been around for a while. It has been deployed successfully in a couple of airports in Germany for a while.
In Hamburg, passengers are informed with signs that their Bluetooth MACs are being collected unless they decide to opt out by turning off Bluetooth during their time in the queue.
http://www.airlinetrends.com/2010/03/30/cell-phone-security-waiting-times/
If we got rid of the security checkpoints the queue times would be 0... problem solved.
what is this about allowing people to choose which line they're going to stand around to go through. Most airports, certainly most larger airports, you're waved into a channel and that's the one you're going through. Switching lanes is most explicitly not allowed. Full stop, end of ergument, or the police officers with the sub-machine guns are going to be talking to the back of your head while you kiss concrete.
Maybe Finland is more civilised. But if the Finns have direct air links with Paranoia Centre (the USA, and they know that it's their own fault that many people want to kill them), I doubt they'll be allowed to be civilized.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"