Airport Check-in

— -- •Zurich Airport has introduced a bag-drop zone that is shared by multiple airlines.

a bag-drop zone that is shared by multiple airlines. Developed by ground aviation specialist Swissport International and aviation technology firm SITA, the 10 common-use counters are for customers of 11 airlines that are members of Star Alliance: Adria Airways, Austrian Airlines, Blue1, BMI, Croatia Airlines, LOT-Polish Airlines, Lufthansa, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Spanair, Swiss International Air Lines and TAP-Portugal.

"Common-use bag-drop counters are much more efficient, and the average time passengers spend being processed has dropped to just under 30 seconds," says Anita Elste of Star Alliance, in a statement.

U.S. airports have been slow to embrace common-use facilities, which are popular at Canadian and European airports.

•The Federal Aviation Administration

has released more details on how it plans to distribute the additional $1.1 billion that President Obama's stimulus program injected into the FAA's Airport Improvement Program (AIP) funds.

The FAA guidance requires half of the funds be assigned to projects by June 17 and the rest by Feb. 16, 2010. Priority will be given to projects that can be completed within two years of the stimulus program's enactment, or Feb. 16, 2011.

No single project may receive more than $15 million. No single "sponsor" of the project — typically an aviation authority or a city/county government — may receive more than $20 million. The AIP funds, which are grants provided by the FAA for capital improvement projects that address safety, security, capacity and environmental issues, total about $3.5 billion a year.

•Airports are catching

on to the Twitter trend. Baltimore/Washington International now has a Twitter account used to deliver airport status reports and travel information to travelers' smartphones. Twitter is an online service used to send and receive short messages no longer than 140 characters.