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.
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In the same period, the American Federation of Government Employees, the labor union representing TSA officers, estimated that passenger volume at USA airports rose 15 percent to 740 million from 643 million.
While the new conveyor belt systems do not increase security per se, the TSA is hopeful they could speed up wait times as much as 35%.
Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers (R-AL3) took Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Administrator Peter Neffenge to task during a committee hearing Wednesday over the issue of the gross inefficiencies at airport screening stations.
But members of the House Homeland Security Committee, who grilled TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger about growing airport wait times, worry the actions won’t be enough to ease travelers’ pain in time for Memorial Day weekend – one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.
The head of the beleaguered Transportation Security Administration told lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday the long passenger lines at screening checkpoints at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport this month should have been avoided. A recent visit to Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport showed that some of those times were wildly inflated by frustrated passengers. Last week, so many people missed their flights at Chicago O’Hare that they had to sleep overnight there on cots.
“I knew that that would dramatically increase the number of people back in the standard lines”, Neffenger said, “and we weren’t staffed at the level we needed to be to man all the lines”. The effort helped shrink travelers’ security wait times from hours to mere minutes. “It’s important to remember that that workforce is still contracted to the federal government, to the TSA”, Neffenger told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day”.
Neffenger said he also had other plans to reduce long lines. With more people traveling this weekend, that time will likely be longer.
Congress agreed to shift forward $34 million in TSA funding, allowing the agency to pay overtime to its existing staff and hire an extra 768 screeners by June 15.
There could be a light at the end of those seemingly never-ending airport security lines.
Some airlines are also pitching in, with Delta Air Lines announcing Wednesday that it is investing $4 million to supplement TSA staffing at 32 airports around the country.
Since implementing supplemental staffing at 32 airports in early May, Delta said it has seen a 10% increase in throughput at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lanes, and has allowed TSA to open almost 30 additional lanes across the U.S.
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According to Neffenger, record-breaking lines stem from his decision to stop randomly assigning passengers to the pre-check security line. Airlines have balked at the suggestion, saying TSA is to blame for the long lines.
