Full Body Scanners Now Up And Running At Palm Springs Airport

A full-body scanner is up and running at Palm Springs International Airport.

The Transportation Security Administration is trying to get 500 scanners in place nationwide by the end of the year, said Nico Melendez of the TSA’s Pacific region office in Ontario.

He said the new-generation scanner in Palm Springs, an L3 ProVision model, has been operational since Sunday. Passengers started going through it Monday morning.

Melendez said passengers are selected at random to go through the scanner. Those who don’t want to have the option of going through an “enhanced” pat-down search, he said.

The machines “allow us to see any possible threatening item that would not be caught going through a metal detector,” he said earlier. “We’ve been rolling out to small and large and medium airports throughout the year.”

The TSA used federal stimulus money to pay for the machines. Ontario has four of them; Los Angeles International has 22.

“Every airport feeds into bigger airports,” Melendez said last week. “Palm Springs might not be considered by your residents to be a big airport, but it feeds into Los Angeles. It feeds into Las Vegas.”