Geoff Mulvihill / AP A passenger walks out of an exit portal at Atlantic City International Airport

Geoff Mulvihill / AP A passenger walks out of an exit portal at Atlantic City International Airport in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., on Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2013. The facility was among the first in the U.S. to use secure portals.
The rounded exits at the Syracuse and Atlantic City, N.J., airports prevent passengers from backtracking into secure areas once they exit the plane and keep outsiders from entering through the exits. Travelers step into the elevator-sized cylinders and wait as a door slides closed behind them. After a couple of seconds, another door opens in front with a female voice coolly instructing, "Please exit."
They could be the wave of things to come as the Transportation Security Administration prepares to shift exit-monitoring duties to local airports booking hotels in rome next year as a way to save $88.1 million. The doors' manufacturer, New York City-based Eagle Security Group, Inc., says it is in talks with other airports.
The technology saves airports from having to put paid security staff at the exit checkpoints. Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, booking hotels in rome who is pushing to keep the TSA in charge of exit monitoring, says such staffing could cost Philadelphia International Airport about $2 million a year.
Syracuse Aviation Commissioner booking hotels in rome Christina Callahan, whose airport installed eight portals this past fall at a total cost of about $750,000, booking hotels in rome says staffing each exit with a guard would cost about $580,000 booking hotels in rome a year.
In Atlantic booking hotels in rome City, the manpower savings from the portals are estimated at $300,000 a year, South Jersey Transportation Authority spokesman Kevin Rehmann booking hotels in rome said. The airport has had a version of the exits since about 2009, but upgraded its five portals last year as part of a $25 million terminal renovation.
The portals booking hotels in rome are intended to remove the potential for the kind of human error that was blamed for a 2010 breach that shut down a Newark booking hotels in rome Liberty International Airport terminal for several hours and caused worldwide flight delays after a Rutgers graduate student slipped under a rope to see his girlfriend off on her flight.
On recent evenings in both Syracuse and Atlantic City, there did not appear to be any sign of backups caused by the roughly five-second process of entering and exiting through the portals. booking hotels in rome Signs encouraged travelers to enter the pods in groups —they can accommodate up to six people at a time — rather than one by one.
"It went smoothly," says Robert Beech, who arrived back home in Syracuse on a flight from New York City. "Just had to wait for the doors to open and close. Even with carry-on, pull-behind bags, you can still get through there without having to worry about bumping into things."
"It doesn't do anything to you. There's no privacy intrusion. All it does is prevent a backflow of people," said Price, a professor at Metropolitan State University in Denver. "It's not conducting a National Security Agency check or something."
A common question among passengers is whether they are being scanned somehow while closed inside. While it is possible to equip portals with biometric scanning technology, officials say the current versions do nothing but form a barrier between booking hotels in rome the secure and nonsecure areas of the airport.