Backscatter at EYW (Key West)?
 

I am planning a trip for April, and the Florida Keys are on the short list of destinations.

Last I heard, Key West Airport was the recipient of a "phased out" backscatter machine from another airport. Since it's so small, I'm sure that every passenger is subject to it.

Does anyone have any recent experience? Is the machine still there in all of its radioactive and naked force?

As I understand it, the Cape Air flights, although the need not use the TSA, fly from the regular terminal and go through TSA security in order to facilitate connections. I that correct?

Florida, unfortunately, is a bad destination for PreCheck for those of us who fly on United or US Airways. Orlando is the only airport with PreCheck for us. Given the painfully slow roll-out of PreCheck, I don't anticipate to see it at Miami or Fort Lauderdale anytime soon for Star Alliance passengers.

Aren't all the BKSX gone (for now)?

The backscatter machines are alive and running full force here in Seattle. The retirement is supposed to be sometime this summer.

I was in Key West in October and they had just installed a backskatter machine and were sending everybody through it. The line was painfully slow. They were also sending people through the machine before their carry on bags were in the x-ray machine. Several people were very miffed about that. My opt out grope, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, was laughable. Worst checkpoing I've been through in a while. Hopefully things will change.

They have not been removed yet, but will all be removed by the end of the summer. However, the TSA has signed contracts with Smiths Detection (infamous for some of the old "puffer" machines that were used at some airports from 2006 to 2010) and American Science & Engineering to develop new body scanners for the TSA that are compliant with the congressional mandate requiring privacy filters. Smiths Detection plans on using MMW technology while AS&E will use BKSX.

However, it isn't totally certain that the TSA will be deploying both companies' body scanners. If AS&E faces the same issues that Rapiscan is having to add privacy filters to their BKSX scanner, then Smiths Detection will probably get the TSA's business for all airports that do not already have (or plan on getting) the L-3 MMW scanners. In fact, Smiths Detection already has privacy software for their eqo MMW scanner: http://www.smithsdetection.com/eqo.php. Therefore Smiths Detection is probably a shoe-in.