TSA chief: ‘We cut too deeply’
Long lines at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints have been causing thousands of passengers to miss their flights. TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger, a Coast Guard vice admiral who has been in the job since July, met with the USA TODAY Editorial Board last week to discuss the problems and the outlook for the busy summer travel season. Questions and answers have been edited for space and clarity:
Q. What’s causing the long lines?
A.
Just in the first five months of this year over last year, we’ve screened 57 million additional passengers. I would attribute many of the long lines directly to the combination of higher travel volume, the moving of people back into standard lanes from PreCheck, and the increased attention we’re paying to doing our (screening) job.
Q. The summer travel season is just beginning. Will things get worse before they get better?
A.
I actually think you’re going to see things get better. I say that in a cautiously optimistic way.
Q. What are you doing to get more people signed up for PreCheck?
A.
We’re working through a bid process to get as many as three additional private vendors to offer PreCheck. We’re trying to accelerate that. Within the existing contract, I’ve been pushing very hard to get more mobile sites out there, just like you see with those kiosks that try to get you to sign up for a credit card. Those things are really effective. I’d like to see more.
Q. What else are you doing ? A.
We run an antiquated (screening) system. It’s a manual system. There are automated systems in place around the world. We’re putting in two automated lanes in Atlanta. We’re going to see how it works.
Q. Do you have enough staff ?
A.
We’re smaller than we should be to handle this kind of volume. I don’t have any problem hiring people. We have more people that would like to come to work for TSA than we have slots for. I need to be able to hire more full-time people. I hire only part- time right now; I have a high attrition rate in my part-time workforce because they want full-time jobs. So I have about a 25% turnover on average in my part-time workforce, about 8% turnover in my full-time workforce.
Q: Why do you hire more part-time workers than full-time?
A.
Right now we hire parttime, and then you go into a line waiting to make full-time, so it can take a while to get to fulltime. Across the system, I probably have about 70%-30% fulltime vs. part-time. I think the balance needs to be more like 85%-15%.
Q. Why are TSA screeners being used for security at presidential rallies? Doesn’t that hurt your capability at airports?
A.
We have an agreement with the Secret Service to provide screening capabilities on demand, at their request. We will likely do so at the conventions coming up. We have a workforce that we call the National Deployment Workforce. That workforce consists of about 250 people total.
Q. Does that make sense to you?
A.
I understand the reason behind it, and we’re the experts at screening. But when you’re in a staff-poor environment, it’s always challenging. I understand the mission, and part of our mission is to protect this nation across the board.
Q. Why was TSA staffing cut in recent years?
A.
It was largely something that was done within TSA and the administration to offer up the savings that they felt they needed to offer up to meet budget targets. It was also done in a time when perhaps there was little less of a threat environment than we currently see. In retrospect, I think we cut too deeply.
Q. Couldn’t the airlines be doing more to reduce the amount of luggage coming through the checkpoints?
A.
We are seeing a tremendous amount of stuff come through the checkpoints; about four times the volume of bags come through the checkpoint as go down below. And we see people take more than the one (suitcase) plus one (handbag) on board. We don’t enforce that because it’s not a job that we can enforce.
Q. Have you asked the airlines to waive their baggage charges?
A.
We, TSA, have not raised it directly. Others in the government have been doing that. They’re pushing it very hard. I think TSA’s position has been: We understand that this is a profitable thing for airlines to do; we understand that that’s part of their business model. We can tell you what we’re seeing at the checkpoints as a result. What we ask the airlines to do is regardless of what they do for baggage fees, please help us enforce the oneplus-one carry-on. That is the No. 1 thing that slows down the checkpoint.
Q. Why can’t TSA enforce one-plus-one? A.
We tried to do that a number of years ago. Security is an antagonistic proposition to begin with. Whether we touch you or not, we’re touching your things, and that’s challenging for people. So I think what we found is that generated some real fights and screaming matches at the checkpoint. I think what TSA said was, it’s better, since the rule is really an airline rule, let’s work with the airlines to see whether they can do it.
Q. Can TSA share real-time figures about how long wait times are, so travelers know when to get to the airport?
A.
The idea is to pull real-time data, hour-by-hour, airport-by-airport, of what we’re seeing for volume. And then working with the folks who did the MyTSA app to push that data into that app, airport-by-airport. I want to get as near real-time as possible. Right now I could do it for yesterday, but you gotta know right now. I’ve talked to each of the airlines, and they’re interested in finding a way to grab the data that we’re (putting out) and driving it out through their apps. I’m hoping to get the app out by mid-June. It may be limited initially to just the top airports, but that’s probably where people are the most interested.
Q. How long is it reasonable to expect people to wait?
A.
I’ve asked that question myself. As long as that line is moving, I can live with the fact that I might have just picked a peak time. It’s kind of like a traffic jam. I can live with lots of cars on the Beltway (around Washington, D.C.); it’s when you come to a dead stop for a long period of time that you start to wonder, “What’s going on?” A significant percentage of the traveling population still waits far less than 10 minutes to get through even the standard lanes; 92% of the PreCheck passengers wait less than five minutes. That’s across the whole system.
Q. Which airports have the worst lines?
A.
It would be the top seven. You’ve got large volumes of people moving through JFK, Newark, Atlanta-Hartsfield, Miami, Chicago O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth and LAX. Two things happen when you get a big spike. One is you either didn’t get enough staffing on a checkpoint fast enough to handle the spike that’s coming through, or you didn’t keep it there long enough to manage the full duration.
Q: When will things get better?
A.
I think the airlines get it that they own part of the problem, too, and they own part of the solution. And it’s not helpful to just stand and point fingers at one another. We actually have the same goal in mind. We want a secure system. We want an efficient system. I think TSA can do a lot better than it’s done. We’re doing better now. I’m hoping that (Memorial Day) weekend proves that we’ve moved past some of the real challenges that we’ve seen because we have a lot of resources that have suddenly come into play.