The Transportation Safety Administration is adding agents instead of reducing staff and is taking other measures in response to sharp criticism from airport officials and travelers around the country.
Because of budget cuts, TSA had planned to reduce its agent rosters by 1700 by September, but has gotten Congressional approval to add rather than cut. The agency’s training site is now on double shifts to graduate 200 agents a week.
Airports such as Minneapolis and Atlanta (where airport officials recently threatened to replace TSA with private contractors) will get some immediate relief, as TSA moves its teams around to cover airports where lines have grown sharply. Twenty-eight teams are being shifted.
Still, passenger traffic is growing, and lines are long. TSA is now advising passengers to arrive two hours early for domestic flights and three for international. In many cases, for domestic flights that would mean more time in the terminal than in the air!
USA Today has a more detailed article on the complaints and changes HERE
I thought there was a $10 or so fee on every airline ticket sold in the US to cover TSA. Isn’t that where their funding is supposed to come from? So with more air traffic, there should be more funds available for TSA agents.
Of course, inevitably such funds are just absorbed into the general budget, rather than what they were intended for.