Just browsed through the forum and looked at some topics, esp. those concerning airport security.
Found lots of good ideas here and wanted to kind of summarise them and add a few own suggestions.
Most important thing about airport (AP) security (sec): there is (simplifyed) a public area and a “sterile/clean” area.
Everyone and anything that wants to get to the clean area must be checked - passengers (pax), luggage (including hold and bulky luggage), airport employees, airline personel, freight, mail, supplies, etc.
There´s different ways how this can be done, for this game (apart from sec.agents) the technical methods and machines are most interesting i guess.
For pax there are:
x-ray machines
metal detectors (walk-through and handheld)
body scanners
body search cabins
etd´s (Explosive Trace Detectors)
shoe-scanners
liquid-scanners
tomographs (tomographic scanners - hand luggage only^^)
Same things are aviable for employee sec.check (although some are not in use, e.g. employees are allowed to take liquids with them)
For fright/mail/supplies most common are:
x-ray machines
tomographs (tomographic scanners)
dogs
etd
There´s been a lot of good ideas already, a few things haven´t been mentioned yet:
hold luggaged (check-in luggage)
H.L. must be checked aswell. There are different ways to do that, most common is a multi-level x-ray system compined with human “assistance” or dogs.
Basically it works in several steps: step 1 decides if ok / not ok → not ok goes to step 2 who takes a closer look-> not ok goes to step 3: very detailed inspection → not ok goes to step 4 (police/bomb squad/etc.)
vehicle inspection / supplies (similarities to cargo)
Shops need wares, restaurants food, aircraft maintenance needs spare parts, …
All those things come from the unsave area to the clean area, mostly by trucks. Therefore there are vehicle inspection points where the truck and the driver are checked by using all the utilities mentioned above.
The other possibility is to unload the trucks and just check the cargo/supplies/deliveries - the truck does not enter the clean area (this is e.g. the way cargo works)
passengers (pax)
Always seperate checked from unchecked pax aswell as outgoing from incoming. Not to mention pax needing passport control, going from Schengen to Schengen, stop-over from Non-Schengen in a Schengen country, etc…
employees
Not every employee needs to have access to everything. E.g.a shopkeeper has nothing to do in a cargo area.
There´s much more but my 1st post is already quite long.
Feel free to ask if there´s any question
Your point about Hold Luggage is already implemented in the way you describe it. As well as security checks for passengers.
For vehicle inspection there is at least a gate that vehicles need to pass through to enter the airport grounds.
These are good suggestions but I don’t think we can expect them all in the first release.
On the other side of the scale, hopefully the game will allow you to build terminals with little or no security screening.
If you’re building a small airport with only small regional turboprop aircraft such as the Cessna caravan etc. it would seem silly to have to build a security checkpoint and bag scanning facilities. In my country no security scanning is required for turboprop aircraft including ATRs and Q300s, so it would be nice to build similar airports to what I’m used too.
Also this would work well for game progression, starting small and implementing more security as the airport grows and larger aircraft start arriving.
@Fossil: You mean as long as the flights don´t leave the country (domestic)?
Hm, in such a case you get checked my place, too.
Only exceptions are:
our president and other leaders of countries (e.g. the queen of England),
flights that carry military personel only (1 “normal” pax on board: sec.check for everyone) and
people who are excepted by an officer of the home office (ministry of the interior)
Even Metallica had to go through sec.check
@Joshua:
In my place this system worked like this a couple of years ago. The result was sec.check for everyone getting onto a plane because save pax (coming from a plane) mixed in the terminal with other pax who weren´t checked yet.
Seperating pax is an advantage for all those who have onward (connecting) flights. They can change from plane to plane without sec.check because they were already checked at the start of their journey (“1 stop security”).
This, o.c., works only with “trusted” airports, if your port loses this status this is a bad thing: literally everyone and everything who/that has a connecting flight has to be screened again.
Idea for the devs: earning extra money
Sometimes companies ask airport sec. for assistance, e.g. food manufacturers: during the production process a (small) part of a machine broke and is now in one of the thousand cans of e.g. soup.
Other than disposing the production and wasting a lot of money they ask the airport sec. to screen (x-ray) the soup cans to find the missing part. O.c. the company pays for that service but this is still cheaper than losing all of the production (common practice in my place, btw)
Search hints: ICAO, IATA, Annex 17, TSA
Useful link: ICAO Annex 17: Security : Safeguarding International Civil Aviation Against Acts of Unlawful Interference. - AviationKnowledge
Note: ICAO (Annex 17) is just a recommendation of what needs to be done, it doesn´t say how to do it. The “how to” is regulated by laws from e.g. the European Community and from national states (NASP - National Security Program) e.g. the UK.
The thing with these recommendation is: it´s factual obligatory. You can still run an airport ignoring these recommendations but you´ll be on a black list and all other airports won´t let planes coming from your airport land
But there are some airports that don’t have separate outgoing and incoming passengers Eg. BIKF 