Airport working to keep lines short
Changes at Bush aimed at avoiding long passenger waits in terminals
In May, when long security lines at Chicago O’Hare International Airport caused hundreds of people to miss their flights and Congress was pressed to authorize the hiring of more Transportation Security Administration officers, most travelers at Bush Intercontinental Airport zipped through security.
Local officials say that more than 90 percent of travelers waited 10 minutes or less between May 6 and May 12. That’s on par with the TSA average wait time nationwide, which remains less than 10 minutes for standard lanes despite reports of long waits across the country.
To keep wait times low in the future, the Houston Airport System is paying roughly $150,000 to recon-
figure a checkpoint in Terminal D as an automated screening lane by the end of the summer. It likewise invested $678,381 for technology at Terminal B to monitor if people are trying to enter secure areas by walking in through the exit. Exit lanes are typically manned by a TSA employee.
“What’s best for us is deploying technology that, frankly, can operate probably more efficiently and effectively than manning that by an individual,” said Gerry Phelan, the TSA’s federal security director at Bush Intercontinental.
Already easing local wait times, officials said, is the geographic spacing between the airport’s multiple security checkpoints and strong communication between airport officials and their counterparts with airlines, TSA, Customs and Border Protection, and Federal Aviation Administration. If bad weather is diverting planes from Dallas to Houston and passengers are forced to stay overnight, for example, all of those parties are brought together to share responsibility for handling the influx the following morning. TSA officers are relocated to busier terminals, rescheduled flights are staggered and more employees are scheduled to work.
“Some airports and airlines and TSA staff do it well,” said Mark Ahasic, associate and senior airport planner with Arup, an independent design, planning and engineering company. “And others don’t do it well.”
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which had 101.5 million travelers last year, nearly 2½ times as many as at Bush Intercontinental, also emphasized communication as key to reducing wait times. Media outlets recently reported long lines in Atlanta, partly caused by the airport closing its south security checkpoint in May to install automated lane equipment like that planned at Bush.
Houston-based airline consultant Pete Garcia said Bush Intercontinental officials have used communication and teamwork to improve wait times during the past six months.
Airport’s sprawl helps
Bush’s five terminals are spread out, and each has its own TSA checkpoints. This helps avoid the bottleneck seen at airports with only one or two security checkpoints, said Balram Bheodari, chief operating officer for the Houston Airport System.
“The arrival rate may be the same, but people, once they arrive to the airport, will fan out to each of the different terminals,” he said.
Some industry experts say it’s better to have centralized, consolidated security checkpoints instead of multiple, smaller checkpoints. Ahasic, with Arup, said having TSA officers staffed at one or two centralized checkpoints allows them to better handle peaks and valleys in traveler volume, which reduces the lines. When spread throughout multiple terminals and checkpoints, some TSA officers sit idly at lowvolume checkpoints while those at busier checkpoints are overwhelmed.
At Hartsfield-Jackson, there are three main security checkpoints at its domestic terminal and another checkpoint in its international terminal.
“Each airport offers its own unique set of challenges based on security concerns, architecture, ground transportation ingress, airline ticketing areas, concessionaire locations and a host of other factors,” Atlanta airport spokesman Reese McCranie said in an email.
Staffing is one of many factors contributing to the recent increase in security lines.
Federal budget cuts have taken a toll, and the TSA cannot hire enough people to meet increased travel demands. The agency also has an attrition problem, said Brett Snyder, author of the airline industry blog crankyflier.com.
“It’s a repetitive job,” Ahasic said, agreeing. “There’s a lot of burnout.”
TSA said its voluntary transportation security officer attrition rate for fiscal year 2016 is 10.74 percent. Many of its front-line employees work part time, and the agency continuously hires and trains officers to manage attrition.
Congress authorized TSA to permit overtime pay and hire 768 additional officers, but Snyder said more needs to be done.
A recent policy change isn’t helping the lines, either. TSA largely ended a practice that used behavior-detection officers and explosive-trace-detection sampling to direct people who haven’t been formally vetted by the government into the expedited TSA PreCheck security line. The PreCheck line is for travelers who paid $85 and have been verified by the government as low-risk fliers.
This and other security changes could lead to backups during the summer season, Snyder said.
Houston’s corporate scene attracts a lot of savvy business fliers with PreCheck, but TSA hasn’t reached its PreCheck enrollment goals nationwide, Ahasic said.
The agency struggles to optimally staff both PreCheck and non-PreCheck lanes, said Robin Dillon-Merrill, professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and researcher for a project working with the TSA on risk-based screening. This often results in PreCheck lanes not being open or being longer than they should.
Automated lane
TSA and Houston airport officials are also investing in new terminal designs and technology.
When the automated security lane opens in Terminal D, travelers won’t have to push carry-on luggage toward the X-ray machine. They will place their items in bins on an automated belt.
The bins will go through the X-ray machine and, after items are removed, return to the beginning of the line. This means TSA officers won’t have to divert their attention from security to collecting containers. If the technology proves successful, the Airport System will install it in all of the Terminal D security lanes.
“This kind of automation helps speed things up simply because you can process more people through the same lines,” Snyder said.
In Terminal B at Bush, new technology from Tyco Integrated Security is using sensors to detect wrong-way traffic. “It’s a system that doesn’t get tired,” Tyco spokesman Matt Frowert said.
There are also plans to consolidate four checked-bag screening locations into one location at Terminal A. This will require fewer TSA officers to scan checked luggage, making more personnel available to screen passengers.