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Tuesday, November 27, 2007 DIA's
two-minute drill
Despite
recent logjams, security lines whizzed right along over the holiday
By Chris Walsh
The
Denver (CO) Rocky Mountain News
An amiable TSA worker screens passengers at
Denver International Airport. Security lines flowed smoothly most of the
holiday. Two minutes and 44 seconds. Shorter
than the time it takes to, say, check out at the grocery store or deposit a
check at the bank. It's
also how long it took the average passenger to get through security checkpoints
at Denver International Airport for most of the Thanksgiving holiday - ranking
as one of the shortest times in the nation. DIA
had the second-lowest average wait time among 40 large U.S. airports from Nov.
18 through Saturday, according to data from the Transportation Security
Administration, which runs airport security. The average wait during peak times
of the holiday period was 7.89 minutes - good enough to place DIA at No. 5 in
that category. "We
did exceptionally well," said Carrie Harmon, a spokeswoman for the TSA. Waits
got a bit longer Sunday, which was the busiest travel day of the week. DIA
posted an average security wait of 4.5 minutes, while it took 14 minutes during
peak times. Those numbers were not incorporated into the overall average
because the TSA compiles such data on a weekly basis ending on Saturdays. Still,
the higher wait times Sunday only move the average up a little bit, Harmon
said. It's
a marked improvement over the the airport's recent performance. The
number of instances in which waits extended to a half-hour or longer hit a peak
of 106 in September, nearly double the total for August. DIA also recorded the
longest peak wait times of all large airports for the 12-month period ended in
September. Waits during that time averaged 20 minutes, although DIA's two-day
closure last December distort those numbers. The
TSA has been working with DIA to improve the process by adjusting schedules,
reconfiguring checkpoints, opening two more lanes on the Concourse A bridge and
bringing in more workers for the holidays. "We
have had some long wait times this year and are working hard to get passengers
through more quickly and efficiently while not compromising security,"
Harmon said. DIA
made it through the Thanksgiving holiday with few problems despite heavy
passenger numbers and some snow thrown in for good measure. "I
don't know of any issues at all," said Joe Hodas, a spokesman for Frontier
Airlines, which is based in Denver and is DIA's second-largest carrier.
"We had to do a little bit of de-icing because of the weather. But that and
everything else went really smoothly." More
than 950,000 passengers traveled through DIA during the holiday week, which the
airport defines as the Tuesday before Thanksgiving through the Monday after it. Lines
were almost nonexistent at airline ticketing counters even at the busiest times
Wednesday and Sunday, when DIA handled 142,457 and 152,528 passengers,
respectively. "It
couldn't have been better," DIA spokesman Chuck Cannon said. "The
weather was good. The airlines and the TSA all had plenty of staff. Parking was
not an issue." Airlines
had additional workers in place, helping ease bottlenecks. There also were
fewer people in general traveling through DIA this Thanksgiving. Passenger
traffic dipped 2 percent, running counter to the nearly 5 percent growth DIA
has seen during the first nine months of 2006. Several
observers speculated that some passengers are wary of traveling to or through
Denver this winter after the airport's highly publicized problems dealing with
snow last December. Frontier
Airlines hasn't seen any operational evidence of that, as the carrier handled
more passengers than a year ago. Still,
the carrier received several calls from media outlets in other states working
on stories about flying into or through Denver this winter. "So, it seems
that at least the media is talking about it," Frontier's Hodas said. How
long were the waits? DIA
security wait times plunged during the Thanksgiving holiday thanks to
additional staff and other adjustments. Wait
times: *
Nov. 4-10 Avg.: 3.06 minutes Average
during peak periods:
10.9 minutes *
Nov. 11-17 Avg.: 2.89 minutes Peak: 9.09 minutes *
Nov. 18-24 Avg.: 2.44 minutes Peak: 7.89 minutes |
