U.S. airlines and airports, including Denver International Airport, are spending millions on added workers to avoid long security lines as Memorial Day weekend kicks off what’s expected to be a record year for summer travel.
“We are concerned for this weekend, where we’ll see higher than normal flight loads,” said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for American Airlines Group. “That will just continue into June and pretty much all the way to September.”
DIA is providing seven contract workers to help with tasks like managing lines and shuffling bins at checkpoints, freeing up Transportation Security Administration officers to focus on screening, said spokesman Heath Montgomery.
The additional DIA staff will work Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays during peak travel times from June 12 through Aug. 20, he said.
American, Delta and United airlines will spend as much as $4 million each for extra workers at their busiest airports to help, as well.
And the head of the TSA, Peter Neffenger, told a House committee Wednesday that the beleaguered agency will add 768 new screeners by mid-June. Most of the new screeners will be sent to the nation’s busiest airports in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and other hubs.
“We have a challenge this summer, which we are aggressively meeting head-on,” Neffenger told the House Homeland Security Committee.
The TSA also has increased the use of overtime in Chicago and other major airports, converted some part-time workers to full-time status and increased the use of bomb-sniffing dogs to help with security lines, Neffenger said.
The efforts follow waits of as much as three hours in security lines starting last month that caused thousands of travelers to miss flights and led to hearings in Congress this week on the agency’s woes.
Summer air travel is forecast to climb 4 percent this year to a record 231.1 million passengers, according to the Airlines for America trade group.
U.S. travelers are being lured to the skies by relatively low airfares. In addition, inexpensive gasoline makes driving more attractive. AAA, the auto club, predicts that more than 38 million Americans will travel by air and road this weekend, which would be the second-highest volume on record and the most since 2005.
Yet 22 percent of 2,500 people surveyed said long airport lines would prompt them to avoid air travel or delay their trips, according to research conducted last week by the U.S. Travel Association. The lost travel spending would total $4.3 billion from June through August, the industry group said.
The TSA advises passengers to arrive two hours early for domestic flights and three hours in advance for international travel, and the busiest airports are the most vulnerable to delays.
DIA travelers can visit www.flydenver.com/security to see the current wait times at each of the airport’s three checkpoints. A TSA spokeswoman said earlier this month that most DIA travelers make it though security in 20 minutes or less.
United Airlines employees at DIA, which is a hub for the airline, have been assisting TSA with non-security tasks at peak travel times since last week, said spokesman Charles Hobart. The airline hasn’t hired additional contract workers for DIA but is working to make that happen, he said.
Delta Air Lines also will provide staffing support at DIA and 31 other airports. American Airlines will help with additional staff only at its hubs and gateway airports, which don’t include DIA.
Frontier Airlines has a link on its website to travel advisory information and also sends a daily e-mail to passengers who are flying the next day with security notifications, said airline spokesman Jim Faulkner.
JetBlue Airways Corp. also is hiring third-party staff nationwide, while Southwest Airlines Co. and other carriers are assigning some of their own employees to help expedite security lines.
“At this point it’s all hands on deck, and we’re thinking about everything we can do to help our customers make their flights on time,” Southwest chief executive Gary Kelly said last week.
Airlines might hold flights to allow passengers time to clear security and prioritize travelers in lines according to scheduled departure times.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is spending $3.3 million to hire 90 contract workers to help manage security lines through September. Charlotte Douglas International Airport has contracted for more than 30 workers who will check carry-on bag sizes and boarding passes and direct travelers to shorter lines. The $1 million annual cost is being paid by carriers, according to an airport spokeswoman.
Other airports are making similar arrangements, Kevin Burke, president of the Airports Council International-North America trade group, told reporters Monday.
“It’s voluntary and it’s temporary,” he said. “It’s really not the role of airport workers to do the TSA’s job. We need to get through this.”
Security lapses by the agency last year sparked criticism from lawmakers and the TSA’s Inspector General. That prompted the agency to allow fewer people into streamlined security lanes and to search all passengers more carefully. Such moves and declining numbers of screeners combined to make lines longer.
On Monday, the TSA ousted its security chief, and a push is underway to persuade Congress to increase funding to the amount the agency says is needed to reach full staffing.
“TSA officers are doing a great job, there just aren’t enough of them,” said Christopher Bidwell, vice president for security at the airports council. “That’s the bottom line.”
The Denver Post and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
