Nine bulky luggage scanners worth $1 million each wait silently beneath the new terminal, poised to check for explosives at a combined rate of 3,600 bags an hour. Concrete bollards guard the main doors. Blast-resistant glass fills the front windows of the $1.1 billion terminal at Indianapolis International Airport, which will open this fall.

New and renovated airports have poured millions of dollars into safety upgrades since the September 11 terrorist attacks, working advice from explosives experts into design plans that encompass everything from the most secure place for parking garages to more efficient security checkpoints.

“We haven’t had to dig a moat around the terminal or anything,” said Jay McQueen, deputy project director for the Indianapolis terminal. “It’s been an incremental set of changes to help make everything more secure.”

The 9/11 attacks, in which hijackers seized control of airliners leaving from Boston, Newark and Washington, triggered a massive re-examination of airport security. Passengers saw the formation of the US Transportation Security Administration shortly after the attacks, and they’ve since become used to spending more time in security checkpoints having their shoes x-rayed and carrying only limited amounts of liquids.

But many other upgrades fly beneath their radar. “We like to say around here that the best kind of security is the security that you can’t see,” said Ken Capps, vice president of public affairs for the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, which opened a new international terminal in 2005.

In Indianapolis, those steps include windows that will fold like a drape when broken rather than exploding into shards of flying glass and a 240-ft-wide strip of lawn that will separate the front entrance of the new terminal from its five-storey parking garage. The grassy median isn’t for pastoral effect. It’s the product of a federal mandate requiring all buildings that hold cars be kept at least 300 ft from an airport terminal.

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