Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the long TSA security check lines and baggage backup are not a “national crisis”, but outlined several steps his department is taking to address the situation.
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“Our job is to keep the American people safe”, Johnson told reporters at a news conference.
Neffenger warned in March that wait times almost doubled from a year ago. Officials said they will also immediately increase overtime, and they hope to hire about 768 new officers as early as mid-June.
Therefore, passengers should arrive at least two hours before a domestic flight and three hours before any worldwide travel. The security checkups would take 20 minutes to an hour.
With summer travel season approaching, the Port Authority said in its letter, “we are concerned that further increases in screening point wait times will only exacerbate customer dissatisfaction, pushing passengers to opt for alternate modes of transportation or cancel their travel plans outright”. But he added, “We’re not going to compromise aviation security because of this”.
TSA has pinpointed tightened security steps and lower budget allocation as reasons for the long lines.
“This line starts at the sliding departure doors by check in, zig zags through the baggage claim belts, though the lobby and finally to TSA”, Jones Tweeted.
“The security line at #Atlanta #HartsfieldJackson is insane”, tweeted @JohnFricke on Thursday. Those bags went to airports in Tucson and San Diego for screening and then were flown to their destinations, Rodriguez said.
It includes luggage bins that move automatically, and kicking bags that need extra screening into a separate line so security screenings don’t come to a halt every time a bag needs to be rechecked.
Sean Hoffman recorded the video of a massive line of humanity inside Chicago’s Midway Airport Thursday.
These explanations might not be enough for the Port Authority of NY and New Jersey, which issued a scathing ultimatum to the TSA, threatening to privatize the screening process.
Johnson and Neffenger noted that damaging revelations from a 2015 DHS inspector general’s report, which detailed “red team” undercover inspectors repeatedly bringing banned items through passenger checkpoints at major U.S. airports, caused them to make changes that-combined with increasing passenger numbers-have led to longer checkpoint lines. “Obviously, waiting 3 hours for what may be a 2-hour flight or a 90-minute flight is not acceptable”.
“We are not seeing widespread flight delays, but many checked bags are missing flights”, said Julie Rodriguez, a Sky Harbor spokeswoman.
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Instead of ensuring that TSA has adequate funding to maintain sufficient staffing, Congress has imposed an arbitrary cap on the number of full-time TSOs for consecutive years. At the same time, the volume of passengers rose from 643 million to an estimated 740 million this year, or 15 percent, according to TSA. In 2014, the TSA lost 4,644 employees while hiring 373 individuals.
