gingersnaps

Atlanta airport GM to TSA: Get your act together or you're out

Randyk47

Private contractors to run the security check points.

RatherBeOnATrain

The latest TSA-related news from Atlanta:

WSB-TV: Atlanta airport GM to TSA: Get your act together or you're out (Updated: 6:03 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016 | Posted: 5:39 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016)

A short excerpt:

eyecue

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local...r-or-yo/nqSTT/

This is a systemic issue because of personnel problems. However it is not as easy for ATL to replace TSA as you would like to think.

Boggie Dog

Any movement to put federal TSA employees on the unemployed rolls is worth whatever effort that is required.

Carl Johnson

There aren't too few screeners. There are too many, too lazy, screeners.

Superguy

If TSA can't plan for adequate personnel - how can we trust them to actually find what they're actually looking for?

Come one - you guys have been around for 15 years now and had darn well better have data to determine pax flow and the screeners needed. That's just management 101.

Boggie Dog

That's just management 101, a class which TSA skipped, along with classes on what actual threats are.

petaluma1

Same types of complaints about prolonged waits are coming out of DEN (eyecue), ORD and other airports.

Neffenger doesn't care if you wait for 4 hours on line as long as he thinks his screeners are finding contraband, contraband that is of no threat to a plane or passengers on a plane.

Maybe some day there will be a passenger revolt, but I'm not holding my breath.

~~

ETA re MSP: "What's going on w/ only 2 checkpoints for thousands of people? We are all shocked, in long lines, & very confused.'

eyecue

Damned if you do, Damned if you don't. Airlines schedule planes at times and loads that vary with the season and day. If the security staffing is set to handle a peak period, then when there no traffic we are over staffed. When there is a lull and you compensate for it, a big crowd comes in and we are understaffed. It is a problem that has plagued TSA from the beginning. We change staffing levels 2 times a year for seasonal variations.

Boggie Dog

The airlines, baggage and ramp workers, fuelers, food service, and all of the other jobs around the airports seem to be able to manage these variations with the exception of TSA.

Why is that?

HawaiiTrvlr

While you are at it, please explain the reported problems at Denver several weeks ago. Specifically, all the checkpoints were closed except for a few lanes at 1 checkpoint. The wait times were over 2 hours. At first, the TSA said the airlines changed their schedule and the TSA were not told about the changes. As it turns out, management at TSA DEN "clarified" the issues and took responsibility for the staffing shortages.

jkhuggins

As much as I'm a critic of TSA, this comparison isn't fair. All the other jobs you name can overstaff their positions in order to be able to handle peak load without anyone complaining about them when they're underused. A ramp worker with nothing to do can hide out in the break room, so nobody sees the idleness. A food service worker with nothing to do stands at the counter and waits for another customer; nobody seems to mind if McDonalds has a bunch of its employees standing and doing nothing, if in fact there's nothing to be done at that moment.

A TSO with nothing to do, however, becomes a poster child for "Thousands Standing Around". It becomes a convenient image for those who already dislike the TSA to put forward as evidence against them, when it's really just the ebb and flow of normal work cycles.

So, if y'all want to criticize the TSA for long waits at peak times, y'all have to give up the right to complain about overstaffing at off-peak times.

(Not that there isn't a host of other things to complain about when it comes to TSA.)

MSPeconomist

MSP was a mess several days in January and now all of this week, with no end in sight as TSA is trying to reorganize security stations at the airport. They spent $17,000,000 for this project and so far the only result is inconvenience and long lines.

cbn42

I don't see how replacing TSA with a contractor is going to help anything. The government is not going to pay the contractor more than they currently spend on TSA, so if the contractor wants to increase staffing levels, that will likely result in a pay cut and therefore less qualified employees. People often complain about government overspending and overstaffing, so this complaint is rather ironic. I guess you can't please everybody.

Some of the worst security experiences I have had in the US have been at SFO, which is staffed by Covenant. The entire approach that the nation takes to aviation security needs to be reformed. Contracting out the actual checkpoint operations is window dressing.