Concept that should have been picked up by the FAA

The recent shoe-bomb attempt got me thinking about a concept my father came up with that was proposed to congress in 1990.

Prior to 1990, he had come up with a special type of revolving door for banks in Spain. First, allow me to explain why Spanish banks would need such protection; in general, Europeans don't use checks or credit-cards that often, and usually carry cash. Thus, there's a bank on almost every street corner, making them easy targets for robbers (usually wanting money for drugs).

The revolving door was, naturally, at the front of the bank, with the base being built into the cement, meaning a person would HAVE to go through the metal detector; there was a ground wire on top of the door. If metal was detected on the person, the doors would lock up, they would have to empty their pockets into a black box that would push out, get tested again, and if they checked out, they could go through.

This worked pretty well, of course the caliber of guns robbers used increased, and thus the type of bullet-proof glass they used had to be changed. They even used some reflective glass (ie: the bullet comes back at the robber), which resulted in a few robbers shooting themselves, lol. This is the same glass used to protect the president.

I'm explicating this to you because its the basis for the concept that was proposed to congress.

The revolving door would be at the entrance of the airport. The first panel you enter would be adjoined by a black box. This black box acts as a "molecular sieve", meaning it picks up certain atomic weights (ie: trace elements found in bombs). It does this by releasing compressed air into the panel the person in, the sensor on the box then takes back in the air and checks for the trace elements.

If a trace element came up, the person would be released into a panel that led to a checking area, if not he/she was free to go to the airport through the other panel.

Obviously, there was concern about the celerity of such a check, as that is ALL the FAA is concerned about, but they calculated that they would be able to get 25 people through the door a minute.

It had its flaws when they tested it at first. For instance, some false alarms were perfume or if a person had just filled up his car with gas before coming to the airport and they had gotten some gasoline on them.

The FAA wanted something that would have NO false alarms, however, which is freaking impossible.

A proto-type likely would have cost 2 million dollars, unfortunately, the FAA didn't view what it was protecting against as a threat at the time, and Congress shot it down, despite liking the concept.

It had potential; too bad it never came into fruition.

Just thought some of you might find this interesting in light of recent events.....