The TSA has made several other committments to help alleviate long wait times at Chicago’s airports, according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who spoke with Johnson and the TSA’s administrator today.
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When will TSA lines get shorter? .
Past year the first week of June saw more than 4,000 people register nationwide.
The TSA has been urging passengers to get to the airport at least two hours early for domestic flights, and three hours early for worldwide flights.
Staffing authorized by Congress for the TSA, which operates security at airports across the country, has fallen nearly 10 percent from 47,147 full-time employees in 2013 to 42,525 this year, according to agency data.
In 2013, the TSA had more than 47,000 full-time workers serving 643 million travelers.
The TSA said it is planning to hire more than 700 new officers to put in security checkpoints in addition to bringing in extra dogs. The program allows passengers to be screened at enrollment in order to have their identity verified, allowing them to enter a separate line that goes much quicker then the normal security lines.
One of the Senate’s foremost camera hounds is pushing for more canines to be deployed to cut down on airport security lines ahead of the peak summer travel season.
What else can travelers do?
The dogs sniff out passengers and their luggage for explosive while they wait in line.
Get more details in the video above. Passengers at both Midway and O’Hare are posting their line photos to Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #IHatetheWait, which was started by a trade organization representing most major airlines. Security lines across the country have been historically long recently because of an increase in travelers, and the problem is expected to get worse in the upcoming summer months. He likened it to going through the TSA’s Pre-Check program, where pre-approved passengers do not have to remove their belts or shoes, thus cutting down time. But for now, that shutdown is adding to the long lines.
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Around noon, the wait was down to around eight minutes, and for a brief period of time, there was no wait.
