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Ensuring smooth operation of an airport is a complex task with many stakeholders involved that have to work together closely in order to achieve optimal results. In particular, the field of security control harbors diverging interests of different entities that share responsibility for secure and timely flights. These entities usually comprise governmental organizations (e.g., legislative authorities, police) and private companies (e.g., airport operators, private security companies). Due to conflicting interests between these entities, managers might perceive each other as adversaries rather than as partners for collaboration. To our knowledge, the present report is the first one to relate procedure and results of a fruitful collaboration on management level between representatives of these different entities at an airport, including a governmental organization as the executive, i.e., carrying out the security control, and a private company (the airport operator). In the setting of the security control at a large European airport, the Productivity Measurement and Enhancement System (ProMES) methodology [1] was chosen to identify stakeholders in the security control process as a first step in order to be able to define their interests, demands, and needs in a second step. Subsequently, justified demands were grouped and categorized into six goal domains. For each goal domain, key performance indicators were developed. Last but not least, the indicators were prioritized by weighing their relevance against each other in order to resolve conflicting interests. This process can be rather quick and efficient provided it is well prepared and monitored. It is further suggested to have an independent facilitator supervise and moderate the process. This study highlights the importance of bringing together high level managers of different organizational entities with a systematical approach in order to pave the way for good cooperation in complex work domains. As a result, stakeholders and demands can be identified, conflicting demands can be discussed, and priorities set. Subsequently, those guidelines can be handed over to the next lower level in the organizational hierarchy. Supervisors on this next level can then define goals for their respective domains using the guidelines provided by the management.

In past years, a lot of research has been done in the field of airport security control. Mostly, researchers that focused on human factor issues looked very closely at the x-ray screening process or at covert testing. However, it has to be taken into account that security control is typically integrated in a competitive, market-oriented environment. Thus, facilitation aspects, such as the maximal capacity (also known as throughput) of a security control line, clearly reflect one important key performance index. In a series of studies, the impact of external factors, for instance seasonal variability of temperature or number of manual baggage inspections, as well as the impact of internal factors, such as the allocation of tasks within security control crew members, were measured. The scenarios with varied internal factors consisted of different manipulations in the work process without changing given security rules, protocols or changes in infrastructure. For example, the Security Officer helping passengers preparing their bags at the roller table has been taken away from this position and assigned as second person for baggage inspection. Implications of these scenarios on measures of efficiency, such as throughput, as well as on subjective measures, such as ratings of workload and stress, have been assessed. Results show that external factors correlate with throughput remarkably and that even slight changes in the process can have a significant impact on the mentioned domains. Experiences made are discussed in order to provide suggestions of useful and feasible optimizations of the security control process.

The impact of leadership structure and behavior on team or crew performance is well known and has been demonstrated in various studies (see e.g. Guzzo & Dickson, 1996; Zaccaro, Rittmann, & Marks, 2001). However, as far as we know, there is no empirical study available on leadership structures and crew performance in the applied setting of airport security control. This study compares the structure and impact of two different leadership models for security control. The first (older) model consists of one supervisor per sector. In the supervisor's sector, there are three to eight crews at work, each consisting of five security officers (SOs). Each crew independently manages and operates one line of the checkpoint. One of the five SOs in a crew is the crew leader (CL), who works together with the crew as a normal crew member but has a few additional tasks to fulfill. The second (newer) model, which focuses more on integrated crew resource management (CRM) criteria, consists of one supervisor, assisted by two CLs per sector. Together, they form a cohesive leading team. The CLs do not work in the crews anymore but manage two to three lines from behind. The crews still consist of five SOs. It is the new CLs' task to quickly isolate and manage problematic cases so that those do not block the line anymore. Like this, the workload of each team member is reduced. Another task is to keep an eye on the working quality and to communicate with the crews in such a way that working quality is enhanced. The impact of this reinforced leadership on indicators of working quality such as compliance with rules and regulations, as well as its impact on passenger flow (throughput) are analyzed using different statistical procedures such as T-tests, U-tests and Chi-square tests. Moreover, the job models of the new leadership structure are presented in detail and SOs' ratings of their acceptance and liking of both systems are presented. In sum, this study offers another, different approach to the human factors perspective in airport security focusing on leadership structures, crew resource management, and their effects.

Large efforts are made in order to enhance human factors in airport security, but one very important area, namely covert or infiltration tests, are often neglected. Covert tests are most important not only for quality control and risk analysis, but also for training purposes, such as for example the training of appropriate reactions in dangerous situations. Therefore, conducting covert tests at airports is a very useful approach for assessing the effectiveness of the security control and offers a possibility to uncover weaknesses in the security process by simulating the case of emergency. Its main benefit is the high ecological validity almost unparalleled by other methods. The present scientific exploratory applied study is one of the first of its kind worldwide, which analyses the results of covert tests collected at a large European airport over a period of fourteen calendar months. Statistical analyses were performed using Mann-Whitney u-tests, chi-square tests and binary logistic regression analysis. Results will focus on differences in detection performance between different test objects and different places of concealment. Additional factors included in the analyses will be time taken for pat-down search, sex, age, work experience, as well as the security officerpsilas reaction to weapon detection. Methodological problems will be discussed and suggestions made for further research in this area.

Due to severe terrorist attacks in recent years, aviation security issues have moved into the focus of politicians as well as the general public. Effective screening of passenger bags using state-of-the-art X-ray screening systems is essential to prevent terrorist attacks. The performance of the screening process depends critically on the security personnel, because they decide whether bags are OK or whether they might contain a prohibited item. Screening X-ray images of passenger bags for dangerous and prohibited items effectively and efficiently is a demanding object recognition task. Effectiveness of computer-based training (CBT) on X-ray detection performance was assessed using computer-based tests and on the job performance measures using threat image projection (TIP). It was found that adaptive CBT is a powerful tool to increase detection performance and efficiency of screeners in X-ray image interpretation. Moreover, the results of training could be generalized to the real life situation as shown in the increased detection performance in TIP not only for trained items, but also for new (untrained) items. These results illustrate that CBT is a very useful tool to increase airport security from a human factors perspective.

A central aspect of airport security is reliable detection of forbidden objects in passenger bags using X-ray screening equipment. Human recognition involves visual processing of the X-ray image and matching items with object representations stored in visual memory. Thus, without knowing which objects are forbidden and what they look like, prohibited items are difficult to recognize (aspect of visual knowledge). In order to measure whether a screener has acquired the necessary visual knowledge, we have applied the prohibited items test (PIT). This test contains different forbidden items according to international prohibited items lists. The items are placed in X-ray images of passenger bags so that the object shapes can be seen relatively well. Since all images can be inspected for 10 seconds, failing to recognize a threat item can be mainly attributed to a lack of visual knowledge. The object recognition test (ORT) is more related to visual processing and encoding. Three image-based factors can be distinguished that challenge different visual processing abilities. First, depending on the rotation within a bag, an object can be more or less difficult to recognize (effect of viewpoint). Second, prohibited items can be more or less superimposed by other objects, which can impair detection performance (effect of superposition). Third, the number and type of other objects in a bag can challenge visual search and processing capacity (effect of bag complexity). The ORT has been developed to measure how well screeners can cope with these image-based factors. This test contains only guns and knives, placed into bags in different views with different superposition and complexity levels. Detection performance is determined by the ability of a screener to detect threat items despite rotation, superposition and bag complexity. Since the shapes of guns and knives are usually known well even by novices, the aspect of visual threat object knowledge is of minor importance in this test.

Aviation security screening has become very important in recent years. It was shown by Schwaninger et al. (2004) that certain image-based factors influence detection when visually inspecting X-ray images of passenger bags. Threat items are more difficult to recognize when placed in close-packed bags (effect of bag complexity), when superimposed by other objects (effect of superposition), and when rotated (effect of viewpoint). The X-ray object recognition rest (X-ray ORT) was developed to measure the abilities needed to cope with these factors. In this study, we examined the reliability and validity of the X-ray ORT based on a sample of 453 aviation security screeners and 453 novices. Cronbach Alpha and split-half analysis revealed high reliability. Validity was examined using internal, convergent, discriminant and criterion-related validity estimates. The results show that the X-ray ORT is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring visual abilities needed in X-ray screening. This makes the X-ray ORT an interesting tool for competency and pre-employment assessment purposes.