"Airports do the security-screener shuffle"

Monday, May 17, 2004

Airports do the security-screener shuffle
The Associated Press


WASHINGTON (AP) - The government will add security screeners at dozens of
airports to reduce long waits for passengers. The number of screeners will
shrink at others.

Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami, New York's JFK and Washington Dulles are among
airports that will get at least 100 more screeners. Pittsburgh will lose the
most: 45. 

The Transportation Security Administration is trying to come up with the
right number of screeners at 445 commercial airports as the busy summer
travel season approaches. U.S. air carriers expect 65 million passengers in
each summer month. That's 12% more passengers per month compared with last
summer. 

This is the third time the TSA has reallocated screeners since it staffed
every airport with federal workers Nov. 19, 2002. Previous changes came
about because Congress reduced the number of full-time screeners the agency
could employ to 45,000 from about 60,000. 

Mark Hatfield, TSA spokesman, said Monday the agency will continue to
fine-tune staffing levels at airports. 

Some airports will get more screeners because they have experienced long
lines at checkpoints. Those include Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport,
Newark Liberty International Airport, Miami International Airport, New
York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Orlando International Airport
and Washington Dulles International Airport. 

Others will lose screeners because they have too many. Among them are
Pittsburgh International Airport, Piedmont Triad International Airport in
North Carolina, New Orleans International Airport, Jacksonville Airport and
Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. 

"We're hoping to achieve those through attrition in the coming months,"
Hatfield said. 

Rep. John Mica, chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, said the TSA
has as many as 5,000 screeners who are not working because they've been
called up for military duty or are out on workers' compensation. Those
workers count against the 45,000-person cap. 

"We need to figure out how to deal with that," said Mica, R-Fla. 

David Plavin, president of the airport trade group Airports Council
International-North America, said the fledgling agency has shown it has too
little experience in airport management to know how to staff screening
checkpoints. 

"It doesn't strike me that the federal government has figured out a way to
be flexible enough to have enough people there when the passengers are
there," Plavin said. Airports need more seasonal and part-time workers to
cope with changes in traffic, he said. 

Doug Wills, spokesman for the Air Transport Association, said the airline
trade group isn't certain how TSA came up with its staffing formula. 

"We, in general, felt that more staffing decisions should be made at the
local federal security director level," Wills said. 

The group is uneasy that centralized hiring decisions made in Washington
result in long delays in hiring screeners. 

Hatfield said federal security directors who manage the screeners helped
make the decision on how many screeners to allocate. 

   Number of screeners at 10 busiest airports   
 
The 10 busiest airports by passenger volume, the number of screeners they
will be allocated and how many will be added (parentheses means a loss): 

Airport Number of Screeners Increase/Decrease  
Atlanta                         1,082 59  
Chicago O'Hare                  1,577 (4)  
Los Angeles                     2,037 0  
Dallas/Fort Worth               1,388 308 
Denver                            725 11  
Phoenix                           920 15  
Las Vegas                         777 35  
Houston                           868 0 
Minneapolis                       720 0  
Detroit                           877 46 

SOURCE: The Airline Business Guide (based on 2002 passenger volume); TSA


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