New screen offers look at arriving passengers

Airport camera eliminates blocked view of escalators.

If you’ve ever wanted to be seen on the big screen, your chance might be com- ing up on your next trip.

But not in the way you think.

As part of its renovations, Hartsfield-Jackson Interna- tional Airport has installed a huge video screen in the domestic terminal that dis- plays passengers coming up the escalators from the Plane Train tunnel.

The reason: The airport has built a new elevator bank in front of the escalators, blocking the view that people waiting for their friends or family once had of the crowds of arriving passen- gers.

Instead, passengers pop out of the escalator area on the sides, leaving some meeter-greeters glancing back and forth to search for their loved ones as passen- gers flow out to the right and left.

The giant screen installed in mid-April now shows peo- ple as they come up the esca- lators — which may be a com- forting verisimilitude of a past reality, familiar to Atlan- tans who remember when they could stand in the arriv- als hall and see actual escalatorsand real people walking toward them.

For others, it may seem like an odd form of visual art to watch a video of what is occurring on escalators behind the screen.

When a train does not arrive with a load of passengers, the screen just shows empty escalators.

For the airport, the video screen is a way to ensure that people who haven’t gone through security screening can wait on the opposite side of the corridor while keeping a keen eye out for their loved ones — instead of approaching the “Do not enter” passageways to escalators and elevators that connect to the secure concourses.

The new elevator bank opens in early May.

COURTESY A video screen shows arriving passengers at the top of the escalators while exiting the Plane Train tunnel at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.