Lessening the lines
SUNPORT AVERTS SECURITY DELAYS AT AIRPORTS
Long airport security lines that have plagued travelers around the country are not an issue in Albuquerque, where the longest wait time during a recent one-week period was 13 minutes, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman said Wednesday.
The Albuquerque airport is fully staffed with TSA screeners, although the agency does not release airport-specific employee numbers, said spokesman Nico Melendez, who is based in Los Angeles.
The 13-minute wait happened on a Saturday during the week of May 8-14, the most recent period available.
That compares with hourslong waits at other airports, most notably in Chicago earlier this month, when hundreds of passengers were stranded overnight.
In Washington, the head of TSA said Wednesday the agency will add 768 new screeners nationwide by mid-June.
Peter Neffenger told a House committee that a combination of factors contributed to the added waiting time to pass through security screening at the some of the nation’s busiest airports: More people are flying this year and fewer people than anticipated have applied for the government’s PreCheck program, which expedites screening for those who have submitted to a background check.
The agency expects to screen 740 million passengers this year, a 15 percent increase over 2013, Neffenger said. That increase came amid a 12 percent drop in the TSA’s workforce and “a renewed focus on security,” he said.
“We have a challenge this summer, which we are aggressively meeting head-on,” Neffenger told the House Homeland Security Committee.
TSA officers are being moved to staff checkpoints at the busiest airports at the busiest times, Neffenger said, and the agency is launching an incident command center that includes officials from major airlines and industry associations. The center will track daily screening operations and shift officers, canine units and other resources to shorten lines, Neffenger said.
Neffenger said the incident involving 450 Chicago passengers missing their flights was preventable and should not happen again.
The agency has installed a new management team in charge of screening operations at O’Hare International Airport, increased the use of overtime in Chicago and other major airports and converted some part-time workers to full-time status, Neffenger said. It also has increased the use of bomb-sniffing dogs to help with security lines.
The effort appears to be working so far, Neffenger said. The longest wait time at O’Hare on Tuesday was about 15 minutes, he said.