[ed. How about just going back to what we had before - metal detectors and x-rays for carry on baggage? Put that bloated TSA budget to better use by employing more Sky Marshals in the air? (Probably because that would mean fewer seats for the airlines to charge).]
The three main explanations making the rounds for why airport security waits have gotten out of control in the U.S. this spring have been:- Lots more people are flying.
- Budget cutbacks have forced the Transportation Security Administration to make do with fewer screeners.
- The TSA is a bungling bureaucracy.
Still -- in part because growth in air travel, tight federal budgets and bureaucratic bungling all seem somewhat inevitable at this point -- it's important to look for other causes of the security-line bottleneck. And yes, people have been looking, and finding.
Bloomberg View’s editorial board argues today, for example, that the TSA’s list of items that are prohibited on planes is a big part of the problem. The list is outdated and largely nonsensical, yet ninnies in Congress object to any proposed change. It’s a classic case of “security theater” trumping actual security.
Another angle, pushed this month by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Democratic Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal, is that the fees airlines charge for checked baggage are causing travelers to bring more, bigger carry-ons that slow security checks. My initial thought was that these bag charges couldn't be the problem because they've been around for years. But it turns out that American became the first legacy carrier to impose a fee for checking even one bag in May 2008, just as air travel was beginning a steep decline. Now that passenger numbers are finally setting new records again, it's not unreasonable to think that the baggage charges are at least part of the security-line problem.
Finally, there’s what I think may be the most interesting culprit of all: A seemingly good idea for reducing security waits that at this point is probably making them longer. This would be TSA PreCheck, the streamlined screening program (you can keep your shoes and light jacket on and your laptop and toiletries in your luggage, and usually get to go through a metal detector instead of a full-body scanner) that was rolled out in 2011 and expanded in 2013 as what then-TSA chief John Pistole called the “happy lane.” As Bloomberg’s Alan Levin and Jeff Plungis reported Thursday:
For the small portion of travelers now in the program that provides access to short lines, it may fit John Pistole’s description. But for passengers who don’t participate, it has contributed to security screening delays and growing tensions at airports because far fewer people signed up than the agency projected.Devoting staff and machines to PreCheck screening lanes with hardly anybody going through them means taking them away from general screening lanes with lots of people going through them. Some airport TSA managers have reacted to the crush of traffic this spring by shutting down PreCheck lanes, which is understandable but leaves no one happy. I experienced this early one Saturday morning this month at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Those of us with the telltale checkmark on our boarding passes got to stand in a separate, shorter line to get our IDs checked, but were then put in the same security screening line as everybody else. When we finally got close to the machines, I told a TSA worker that I had PreCheck and asked if I needed to take my laptop out or my shoes off. Laptop comes out but shoes can stay on, she said, then allowed me to cut in front of several people and go through the metal detector instead of the scanner -- without ever looking at my boarding pass to verify that I was in fact PreChecked. Now that's security!
by Justin Fox, Bloomberg | Read more:
Image: Paul J. Richards
