<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by pwmflyer:
I could not agree with the overstaffing issue more. I fly out of Portland Maine (PWM) at least 3 times a month. You can always see several TSA agents standing around chatting, drinking coffee and not be proactive with security.
One Sunday afternoon, it took me 30 minutes to clear security. At PWM they have 3 check points. Only one was open. 15 TSA agents were in the security checkpoint area. A couple of passengers complained to the agents at the x-ray belt that they were going to miss their flight. The response was a rather snippy “You’re suppose to be here 2 hours before your flight.”
At that point I started timing the amount of time it took to get people through the metal detector and out the other side of the check point. They were running slightly over 90 seconds per person. Clearing enough people to fill a 737-300 would take 3 hours 8 minutes at that rate.
After being nice and cooperative with the screeners, I asked to speak to the supervisor. He came over and I asked him why they only had 1 lane running. His response was he did not have enough people working to open a 2nd lane. Mind you, I just had counted 15 TSA minions. I asked him (and yes I was being polite and respectful) “How many people do you need per lane”. His response, “6”. Okay now I was a little surprised by this. The next words out of my mouth were “How many people do you have now?”, The answer “9” . He then saw the look of shock on my face and added that several of them were on break.
My feeling is: If a TSA employee is on break they have ZERO reasons to be in a secure area. They can only serve as a distraction to those agents who are working trying to keep air travel safe from screwdrivers.
I know this will never happen. But gee, wouldn’t it be neat if they had to wait in the same security line as the rest of us before returning to work. Wouldn’t it suck if you went on a half an hour break only to spend 5 minutes of it on break and 25 minutes in line getting back to work. A lot of you are probably saying that’s a waste of taxpayers money making them wait instead of fast tracking them past all the travelers. Yup, it is. On the other hand how much money is mine and every other travelers companies wasting on their employees with the loss of productivity hours due to inefficient security processes?
Long answer to a short point. TSA is way over staffed. They are almost 700 million dollars over budget. They need another 2 billion from congress over the next two years to continue to function. IMHO, they are doing more damage then good to the air travel industry.
Yesterday I flew out of Lansing MI. The TSA there were polite, professional, staffed appropriately, and quick. Now if only the rest of the USA would follow that line. </font>
Another example of an uninformed FT speaking of subjects they know nothing about.