They claim that TSA’s target to convert 25m passengers across its USA airports network for the faster PreCheck preregistered service has not been realised, with just over 8m answering the call. Kelly Hoggan, who testified before Congress about multiple TSA problems earlier this month, has been reassigned within the TSA in another game of bureaucratic musical chairs. An estimated two million-plus of those same passengers are testing their patience in TSA lines at airports from Miami to Washington, D.C.to Los Angeles.
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The report notes that the nation’s medium and small airports, which typically have less money to invest in perimeter security, have plenty of incidents but do not undergo the “joint vulnerability assessments” that large airports receive every three years from the TSA and Federal Bureau of Investigation. To date, 22 airports have dropped TSA and switched to more cost-effective, flexible, and efficient private alternatives.
“I saw the news, and that’s why we got here early today”, Freda Funk said last week as she worked her way through a line that snaked nearly from the ticket counter to the X-ray machine at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport.
“This has enabled us to expedite the hiring of 768 new TSOs, which we expect to have on board by mid-June, and to pay additional overtime to the existing TSO workforce”.
In fact, you may be reading these words on an actual TSA line snaking through a barbed-wire airport as you struggle still to return home from Memorial Day … someday. Moreover, this summer traveling season is expected to be one of the busiest. That’s what holiday traveler Kendra Morehead of Wooster, Ohio, said after flying from Detroit to Denver on Monday. Schumer said that delays at the NY airports do not only affect travelers coming to and from the region, they can ripple across the entire country. He added that the near total security test failure points to the need for more extreme changes at the TSA.
TSA has said it does not have enough resources to assess security breaches at all USA airports, but the GAO report said the agency should do better at finding ways to improve security nonetheless.
The cost-conscious Congress has squeezed the TSA budget in recent years, reducing its airport workforce of about 45,000 by 12 percent. The longest wait time at O’Hare on Tuesday was about 15 minutes, he said. The letter also states that the absolute maximum in 2016 was 55 minutes vs. 30 minutes in 2015.
“We expected it was going to be a lot busier than it was, lines would be longer than we encountered”, said Wade, who is from Monument.
Earlier this month, Schumer pushed the TSA to address the issue of long wait times, specifically by adding additional TSA agents to NYC airports as soon as possible and by increasing the number of highly trained Passenger Screening Canine Teams at New York City airports.
Most airlines also deserve special shame for refusing to enforce their own baggage-size rules, as well as the “one plus one” rules that limit passengers to one carry-on bag and one personal item. Wait times are not soaring simply because security is that much tighter.
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Travelers reported moving quickly through airport checkpoints Friday after authorities opened extra screening lanes and used bomb-sniffing dogs to give some passengers a break from removing their shoes.
