I was about halfway in a ~100 person line at BOS recently and a TSA agent handed me a yellow piece of paper saying:

"Hello, I'm a representative of the TSA. Please take this time stamped card and help us determine how long it takes to get through this line. You have been selected because you are the last person in line. Please give this card to the line monitor at xray."

I said "uh - I'm not last in line." He said "doesn't matter". Hello? I was easily 20 minutes through the line wait, if not more. What gives?

BDLer

I didn't think they collected that data anymore. They certainly no longer publish it.

Write George Naccara, the Federal Security Director at Logan and let him know of your experience. Maybe write the TSA an e-mail through the website as well.

"Doesn't matter" can be construed on so many levels. Most of them just leave me sad.

If your wait exceeds 10 min for any reason, file a complaint when you are done with the "security" experience or by calling 1-866-289-9673. Don't accept any excuses: file a formal complaint each and every time. If there is an employee(s) who compounds your delay, be sure to name them in your complaint.

They still do wait time cards, and yes it is supposed to go to the last person that is in the line when the card is given. Usually the time is written on it when it is given out and again when it is recovered at the metal detector.
We (ORD) really only do it when the line is "perceived" to be more that 20 minutes long. Our wait time cards are a bit more primitive though than the nice printed version you got. Blank piece of paper with the time written on it stuck into an id holder lanyard.

I got one of those once in LAX. Stuck it in my pocket then tossed it in the trash later. Figured they could chalk it up to standard deviation.

How often is that?

I don't think that was the proper way to handle it-- this seems like one of the very few proactive steps the TSA takes. What they do with that data is a question yet to be answered (though one can speculate that it is used to decide when to up staffing), but I think if they are taking the trouble to attempt to collect the data, we should help them out. I believe the motive for this practice to be pure (except that it may result in increased hiring).

i've been asked and politely refused. simple as that tho i do like El Cochinito's method better

Wait times are now collected only for local purposes. For a while TSA was collecting this info because the data didn't really mean anything. A few airports have wait times all the time, but most airports have low wait times with spikes throughout the day. Those spikes can be predicted but are also related to traffic at airline ticket counters. For example my airport has typically low wait times even when flights are at full capacity, the only time wait times increase is when one airline's ticket counter is slow so that passengers from multiple airlines all arrive at the screening checkpoint at the same time.

This condition is related to weather, airline staffing, passenger composition, etc. Most of the time we have adequate staffing, and we do try to predict wait time spikes. But it winds turning a 8 minute wait into a 24 mintute wait, which is not catastrophic. We do watch passenger loads closely, but really the only true impact on wait times is if the United passengers arrive at the same time as the Southwest passengers which is independent of flight loads.

In any case TSA does not use wait times to justify hiring. Airports are allowed to hire based on the total number of passengers departing from the airport, with some wiggle room that is justified at the national level.

I think TSA recognized that the process needed to be standardized to be effective, however the effort to collect the info was not worth it. If the checkpoint was collecting bad info, it wasn't going to be really used for anything anyway. I think that this is info that passengers may think they want but don't actually use. The effort to make it good data does require work to ensure it is standardized and accurate.

I can tell you as someone who worked as a checkpoint supervisor collecting wait times had a price. It was easy to collect the info when we were slow, but when we were busy I wanted every TSO working to get people through the line and on their way.

This was a long meandering answer. But basically the wait time info is meaningless is my answer.

castro

Fake security organization = Fake security data

Thank you for the common sense.

What some in here don't know is precisely what you pointed out: collecting time-wait data helps the AFSD assign shifts according to documented passenger flow rather than guestimating it on airline flight info. At our airport, we vary our shifts accordingly. In fact, the standard 8-hour shift is now the anomaly.

But please don't spoil the anti-TSA sentiment here for those who pocket the data cards, laughing cleverly to themselves, and then wonder why there aren't enough officers at the checkpoint.

Huh? What's that??

At SDF, there's exactly 1 officer at the checkpoint. Perhaps that number becomes 2 during shift change. I have not witnessed that happening. Regardless, that officer sits behind the podium and appears to make easy, though seemingly dull money. There is also a large number of Workfare employees on the government dole. That number fluctuates, though their effectiveness does not.

Where is the common sense in collecting data that is not accurate and reflective of actual wait times?