Airport screening system under strain says TSA

Things can always get worse. America’s luggage screening system is under severe strain, a recent Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) report says, pointing to a dearth of screeners and the failure of planners to fully integrate explosive dection machines into airport conveyor systems. “It’s very urgent,” said James Bennett, CEO of the authority that runs Washington’s Reagan National and Dulles airports. “It’s one of the — if not the — most pressing improvement that needs to be made in aviation security.” Jim Crites, operations chief at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, said “there is no more room” in airports for additional luggage scanners, “and yet you have more demand coming on.” To make matters worse, the study was completed before the recent London bomb plot forced passengers to check even more luggage than before. Experts say fixing the problems would cost almost $5 billion, a hefty bill in these cash-strapped days.

The report did make a number of suggestions worth considering. One is to “sell
federal tax credits that would be redeemed over many years, and by making airports pay $700 million. That plan would move up the installation of new machines to 2013 instead of 2024, when they’d be in place without special financing,” USA Today reported. New high-speed scanners are also expected to hit the market in the next few years, and there is hope their efficiency could help cut personnel costs.

-read more in Thomas Frank’s USAToday report