Expect Airport Security Delays This Summer

Remember when the Transportation Security Administration -- the government agency in charge of the nation's airport security -- promised last year to have travelers through security checkpoints within 10 minutes?

Not anymore. Last week, at a congressional aviation hearing, TSA officials not only backed away from that pledge but refused to provide new guidance for travelers expected to pack the nation's airports this summer in numbers not seen since before Sept. 11, 2001. Getting through security today at any of the nation's airports within 10 minutes, said TSA spokeswoman Chris Rhatigan, "would be a false expectation."

With the biggest crowds yet to come, major airports including Washington's Dulles, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson, Las Vegas International and Los Angeles International are grappling with security lines that average more than an hour -- and have been as long as five hours during peak periods. Passengers at Dulles and Hartsfield-Jackson routinely wait in lines for as long as 90 minutes, airline officials said.

Doug Wills, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, said the airlines have suggested various ways for the TSA to reduce the waits, but the process has been slow.

"If Disney can do a good job at line management and small retailers can manage lines, you would think the TSA could take from those best practices to get people through more quickly," Wills said.

And while the TSA works on reducing airport waits, it also has to work on training some of its employees better in how they treat airline passengers.

According to the Department of Transportation's Air Travelers Consumer Report, airline passengers filed more than four times as many complaints against security screeners in March than against the airlines themselves.

The screener complaints centered on the handling of checked bags and carry-ons and excessively long processing times at checkpoints. Inappropriate screening of bags accounted for 519 of the 2,728 complaints, the most in any category. Discourteous treatment by screeners received the second most complaints.

Rhatigan said the biggest cause for the delays is staffing. Because of congressional budget cuts late last year, the number of screeners was cut to 45,000 this year from 55,000. Currently, the TSA employs about 43,800 screeners and is slowly building up to its maximum allotment as TSA officials conduct background checks and train new hires before they are dispatched to airports, she said.

Rhatigan said the agency was constantly training and retraining screeners, paying particular attention to how the screeners relate to passengers while focusing on security.