Airlines Committed to Helping Passengers as Summer Travel Kicks Off

Expect the airports to be busy too, but the TSA says it’s added more staffers to help reduce wait times going through security.

AAA estimates 38-million Americans will take a trip this holiday weekend, the second highest travel volume on record. “Third, the TSA Pre-Check program, which allows low-risk passengers to go through expedited screening has not met enrollment goals”, she said.

The San Francisco International Airport has been contracting with Covenant Aviation Security since the early 2000s to staff its front-line screening personnel and was therefore not significantly impacted by the shortage, said spokesman Doug Yakel.

But the weekend is still young.

Passengers can expect longer wait times during the busy Memorial Day weekend, Hawaiian Airlines said.

It could pickup around the dinner hour as more people get off work and head to the airport.

Johnson ticked off other steps the agency is taking to mitigate travel disruptions, including deploying canine teams, setting up a centralized incident command center and giving local airport officials the authority to make resourcing decisions. Another 58 TSA officers are expected to come to Chicago airports in the coming month.

But Hartsfield-Jackson has new hope since re-opening a security checkpoint this week, debuting a new system by TSA to speed up the process. They had a lot of time to kill, Ceniceros said.

Out of a total of 233 passengers who responded to the survey, 48% were of the opinion that security lines were not longer as compared to their previous visits, while 44% reported that the lines were longer and 7% remained neutral.

American Airlines spokesperson, Katie Cody said, “It’s a major issue nationally that we are concerned about for our customers”.

Erin Baldassari covers transportation.