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Old Jan 21, 2019 | 12:24 pm
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chollie
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Originally Posted by WillCAD
News flash: the TSA sickout has now reached ten percent of the workforce.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ck/2636495002/

I must admit, when we first heard of this issue a week ago, I scoffed. Only a slight uptick in the number of sick calls, I thought. No big deal, I thought.

But when your sick outage reaches ten percent of the workforce, multiple airports closing checkpoints due to short staffing, and the end of the shutdown is nowhere in sight, I must admit, I was wrong - this is significant.
I'd like to see the internal data, because I think TSA HQ is still playing fast and loose with the numbers.

The 'average' wait time is 30 minutes? That's pretty misleading, considering it is very very rare for small commuter airports (a few flights a day) to ever experience a long wait. Those figures should not be averaged in with the numbers from airports like ATL that are experiencing much longer wait times.

It simply isn't fair to the pax (or TSOs or airline employees) to post misleading statements about wait times. There is no reason for someone to assume they have to show up at a puddle-jumper airport three hours early. There is every reason to think three hours will be needed at ATL. Why put pax, airline employees and TSOs through unnecessary stress? Is it just because TSA bonuses are based on misleading numbers?

I don't know if it was ever fixed, but TSA had a wait time tool at one time. Someone realized that it only went to 30 minutes, the maximum 'acceptable' wait time. It wasn't possible to feed it a longer wait time.

Originally Posted by jamesinclair
Are you sure about that?

The Fresno Bee ran an extensive article about the IRS agents being hurt by the shutdown. Fresno is home to the largest IRS processing center in the country.
Have you tipped your IRS agent? Or contributed to a local food bank on their behalf?

I'm less worried about a screener missing a bottle of water than I am about getting a delayed tax refund.

Last edited by TWA884; Jan 21, 2019 at 2:48 pm Reason: Merge consecutive posts by the same member; please use the multi-quote function. Thank you.
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