MilesBuzz! - New airport design/ idea re: VIP and secuirty

Put the VIP club room between the secure and unsecure area. Go in one door. Enjoy yourself. Exit through (more) private secuirty screening area.

Con: The security machine would be disruptive to the lounge atmosphere. But good design can mitigate that.

Pro: Allows club members to bypass long long lines.

[This message has been edited by zrs70 (edited 10-01-2001).]

And you don't think there might a line there? In some airports, the fact that they can spread the occassional surge across many scanners makes it work better. Those airports with scanners spread all over the place are more difficult, and that would apply to these lower volume rooms.

You'd have to figure lounges into the basic architecture and passenger-flow patterns of the airport -- which would demand an insanely expensive and time-consuming retrofit. In all but the newest airports, even the security checkpoints we have are juryrigged afterthoughts. The terminal space and pax flow patterns were conceived long ago, before anyone thought of metal detectors. Positioning lounges as the "Checkpoint Charlie" between landside and airside is an interesting idea, but you'd have to tear up whole airports to do it.

Several airports have separate security lines for premium passengers - that's a much simpler solution, which doesn't need a redesign of the whole airport. And of course reducing the number of people that have to pass through security (such as meeters and greeters) would help as well. In fact, in Lisbon yesterday only travelling passengers (and staff) were allowed into the airport. It made the airport feel wonderfully spacious.