Screener sick-outs hit 10%
The percentage of TSA airport screeners missing work has hit 10 percent as the partial government shutdown stretches into its fifth week.
The Transportation Security Administration said Monday that Sunday’s absence rate compared to 3.1 percent on the comparable Sunday a year ago.
The workers who screen passengers and their bags face missing another paycheck if the shutdown doesn’t end early this week. According to TSA, many of them say the financial hardship is preventing them from reporting to work.
TSA says the national average waiting time in airport checkpoint lines is within the normal limit of 30 minutes, but there are longer lines at some airports.
The agency has dispatched extra screeners to airports in Atlanta, LaGuardia Airport in New York, and Newark, New Jersey. A TSA spokesman said other airports also might be getting additional help.
Sunday’s 10 percent absence rate indicates that more than 3,000 airport screeners missed work. TSA has 51,000 screeners, and a spokesman said that about 33,000 work on any given day. That topped the previous high of 8 percent Saturday.
With fewer screeners, TSA closed one of its security checkpoints at Baltimore/Washington airport over the weekend, reopened it, but closed it again Monday afternoon, according to an airport spokeswoman.
A checkpoint at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport remained closed. An airport spokesman said lines were relatively short at the other six checkpoints.
TSA appeared to be managing the high sickout rate as well as could be expected. The agency said that on Sunday it screened 1.78 million passengers, and only 6.9 percent — roughly 120,000 people — had to wait 15 minutes or longer to get through security.
No figures were yet available for Monday, but websites or spokespeople for several major airports including Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago’s O’Hare reported normal security lines and few problems. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which had some of the longest lines in the country last week, reported waits of 15 to 30 minutes at domestic-travel checkpoints Monday. Los Angeles International Airport showed most lines under 20 minutes.