The online system for submitting MSP Airport security badge applications is starting to roll out to companies at the airport and details will soon be showing up in your email inbox.

The Metropolitan Airports Commission and the MSP Airport Police Department have worked with a small test group of airport employers in recent weeks. We listened to their feedback, made some changes to the process and are now sending out the online application forms to larger numbers of our partner companies.

The new online process eliminates the paperwork associated with the security badging process and provides for electronic submittal of the application forms. Your employees will still need to show up at their application reviews with you, the Signer, with identification and documentation, such as a driver’s license and birth certificate. They’ll need those materials when they come to the Badging Office as well.

We appreciate your cooperation during the roll-out and your attention to detail with the new forms.

Each year the Badging Office sends out random audits to a small group of MSP Airport employers to verify the status of employee badges. This year’s random audits will go out in the next week by email. Please take the time to complete them and return them to the Airport Police Department.

We often hear from companies that didn’t receive an audit – but heard about it from other businesses -- that they were forgotten. That is not the case with the random audits. If you don’t receive one, you don’t have to worry about completing it.

Each badged employee at MSP is required to gain access through a secure door using only their own valid security badge.

If one of your employees is asked to let another employee through a door, they don’t know if the second person had their badge suspended, or it expired, or they may have lost it. Whatever the situation, badge holders are not allowed to “piggy-back” another employee through a secure door for any reason. Such a violation of security rules will lead to badge suspensions.

Also, badges can only be used to perform job duties on the secure side. Using a badge to enter a secure area to meet a friend at a gate -- or to shop and eat outside of your work hours -- is a security violation and could result in a citation or a badge suspension or revocation.

Please remind your employees of these requirements as they apply for new badges or renewals.