Aviation securityMore airports consider replacing TSA with private contractors

A new year has brought new resolve for airport managers who are fed up with the Transportation Security Agency. “The TSA has grown too big and we’re unhappy with the way it’s doing things,” said Larry Dale, president of Orlando Sanford International Airport. “My board is sold on the fact that the free enterprise system works well and that we should go with a private company we can hold directly accountable for security and customer satisfaction.”

Dale is not alone. Msnbc reports that airports in Los Angeles, the Washington, D.C. metro area, and Charlotte, North Carolina, are also considering replacing the TSA with private security contractors.

Full-body scanners and enhanced pat-downs have spurred a loud outcry from an angry public, as well as some big hitters on Capitol Hill, and airports are looking at moving away from federal TSA workers and moving toward private contractors.

Representative John Mica (R-Florida.), recently named chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has encouraged the nation’s 200 biggest airports to opt out, calling TSA a “bloated, poorly focused and top-heavy bureaucracy.”

Same cost, same procedures

This despite the fact that opt-out airports realize no cost savings. “TSA issues the RFP [request for proposal] and selects and manages the contractor” that steps in, said Michael McCarron, director of community affairs at San Francisco International, one of the first airports to adopt private screeners.

Nor will passengers at opt-out airports be able to sidestep security procedures. “TSA sets the security standards that must be followed and that includes the use of enhanced pat-downs and imaging technology, if installed at the airport,” said TSA spokesperson Greg Soule.

Airports studying the program believe, however, that there may be benefits worth pursuing.

“We aim to ensure that the highest level of security is balanced by the most passenger-friendly service possible,” said Nancy Suey Castle, a spokesperson for Los Angeles World Airports. “Contracting private screeners could be a method to achieve this goal.”

“We’re very good at what we do,” said Gerald Berry, president of Covenant Aviation Security, the private screening company hired by TSA for San Francisco International, Sioux Falls Regional and several Montana airports. “By law, our screeners have to get the same pay and benefits as government screeners and we have to do an equal or better job.”

Opting out

When TSA was created in 2001, the Aviation and Transportation Security Act mandated that the Screening Partner Program (SPP) be adopted to allow screening