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Homeland Security Cuts Causing Extreme Delays And Missed Flights (chicagotribune.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Chicago Tribune reports on "a growing backlash over extremely long airport security lines," which the Transportation Security Administration is blaming on a loss of 4,622 screeners. "In the past three years, the TSA and Congress cut the number of front-line screeners by 4,622 -- or about 10% -- on expectations that an expedited screening program called PreCheck would speed up the lines. However, not enough people enrolled for TSA to realize the anticipated efficiencies."
Passengers in security lines waited one hour and 45 minutes at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, with other airports reporting wait times of 90 minutes, and crowded lines "snaking up and down escalators, or through food courts, and into terminal lobbies." Some flights have even delayed their take-offs just to wait for more of their passengers to clear security. (One Dallas-Fort Worth flight waited 13 minutes, resulting in 23 more passengers who made it onboard -- while another 29 passengers still had to be rescheduled for later flights.) "We encourage people to have the appropriate expectations when they arrive at airports,â said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Friday, saying the screenings were necessary to ensure passenger safety. "Contemplate increased wait times as you travel."
Johnson also said the TSA would increase the use of overtime, hire 768 new officers as soon as mid-June, and use more threat-sniffing dogs. Meanwhile, a TSA computer glitch caused 3,000 pieces of luggage to miss their flight in Phoenix, prompting city officials to investigate replacing the TSA with a private security contractor.
Passengers in security lines waited one hour and 45 minutes at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, with other airports reporting wait times of 90 minutes, and crowded lines "snaking up and down escalators, or through food courts, and into terminal lobbies." Some flights have even delayed their take-offs just to wait for more of their passengers to clear security. (One Dallas-Fort Worth flight waited 13 minutes, resulting in 23 more passengers who made it onboard -- while another 29 passengers still had to be rescheduled for later flights.) "We encourage people to have the appropriate expectations when they arrive at airports,â said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Friday, saying the screenings were necessary to ensure passenger safety. "Contemplate increased wait times as you travel."
Johnson also said the TSA would increase the use of overtime, hire 768 new officers as soon as mid-June, and use more threat-sniffing dogs. Meanwhile, a TSA computer glitch caused 3,000 pieces of luggage to miss their flight in Phoenix, prompting city officials to investigate replacing the TSA with a private security contractor.
Well obviously what we need to do is get rid of the TSA, and I don't think that asking people to boycott flying is going to work. It didn't work when the TSA was first introduced and the lines jumped back then, it didn't work when they introduced the stripscanners (even though the early ones were possibly carcinogenic), didn't work with "enhanced patdown", etc. The best we seem to get with a boycott is the TSA makes things much worse, people complain and business slows a little, the TSA partially rolls back the change, and everyone starts flying again. Ignoring the fact that the change was only partially rolled back, so things keep getting worse incrementally.
But demanding that congress gets rid of the TSA and just goes back to metal detectors isn't going to work either, it's too much backpedaling. It would mean admitting a mistake. So I was thinking maybe a market solution would be the right approach: get a few startups offering low security flights, operating from a low security terminal at the airport. If they get a lot of business (and they will) it could drive a larger change as the bigger airlines adopt similar practices for some of their flights.
Is it necessary to live 6,000 miles away? Or do you live 6,000 miles away because it has been so easy to visit them? Would you move closer if it were no longer so easy to visit?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Flights per year in US: 800x 10^6. Assume 2/3 of those go through TSA.
Average time spent in line at TSA: 20 minutes
Average human lifetime: 40 x 10^6 minutes
800 x 10^6 * 2/3 * 20 minutes / (40 x 10^6) = 267 human lifetimes
The TSA wastes at least 270 human lives every year. Even if we had no security at airports, terrorists would never kill that many people EVERY year.
That does not even factor in the billions of dollars that it costs to run the TSA.
Here's an idea for the people who seem to love to spend money on technology - have a system where I can take a look at the current (and expected) wait times before I leave for airport.
While I'd still hate long waits, right now I have no idea if I'm going to be done in 10 minutes, or an hour. Maybe you could tell us? I'm sure you will come up with a "security" reason why us plebs shouldn't know how long the lines are going to be, and instead have to guesstimate the wait time.
It might in fact work out better if you use an appointment type system - recently I was in line with a person who had come to the airport two hours before his flight, and someone whose flight was going to depart in the next 15 minutes. When you make wait times unpredictable, you are creating these type of situations.
Most people I know who fly from NZ/Aus to Europe/UK to go through Asia/middle east to avoid the USA. They typically spend 3-7 days in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai on the way to/from the UK etc buying up hotels nights, tourist attraction tickets, food, shopping etc etc etc. The US is already missing out on Billions of dollars in Tourism, and its only going to get worse. We have a trip coming up, but it will be our last to the USA, there is simply too much else to see in the world to be bothered with the aggravation. We were going to be coming for 8 weeks, but have reduced this to 3, 8 days of which are now a cruise in the Caribbean. Time has been allocated to Hong King, London and when we get back, off to Samoa for 10 days.
The answer is to absolutely forbid ever absolving the airlines of liability for loss of life if they loose a plane due to negligence or letting on a bad guy.
Establish a fairly simple standard set of security criteria. Let the airlines voluntarily submit to independent testing of their defenses. If they pass (with periodic re-inspection) then they get some bonus, like protection from *criminal* liability for an accident. This way, small private charters can forego the standard compliance without undo risk because they basically know their clients.
Seriously, we aren't even trying to solve this. I haven't heard a new political idea about just about anything in decades.
Does anyone else have a problem with there being a fee at all? This sure seems like government treating people differently because of their economic levels, something that we are generally supposed to oppose. This really bothers me lately -- I'm standing in the high speed PreCheck line and watching the woman with three kids try to keep them entertained in the slow main line. She's a lower threat profile than I am (male traveling alone), but I have the time and resources to go get the TSA interview. Something feels really wrong here.