The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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.