Tupelo airport joins SPP
TSA has established the Screening Partnership Program (SPP) o allow airports to use private contractors for screening; Tupelo has joined five other airports already in the system, contracting a Virgnia company to run screening operations
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has selected Fairfax, Virginia-based Trinity Technology Group for a new contractor to run security screening at Tupelo Regional Airport in Mississippi. TSA awarded the $3 million contract to the company to manage passenger checkpoint and baggage screening. Trinity in turn picked Bolingbrook, Illinois-based Covenant Aviation Security as a subcontractor.
Covenant had been the airport’s screening contractor during pilot testing of TSA’s Screening Partnership Program (SPP), also known as opt-out, which allows airports to apply to the agency to use private contractors for screening. Federal security directors are still responsible for maintaining TSA’s security standards and managing contractor performance at the opt-out airports.
There are currently six airports in the SPP. Tupelo is the latest airport to renegotiate its contract to continue privatized screening after the pilot program ended on 19 November 2004. Tupelo in the new contract agreed to performance metrics that TSA developed and recently adopted. Three other airports, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Kansas City, Missouri, have signed new contracts which include performance metrics. San Francisco and Rochester airports are waiting for contract awards which will put them on the same system.
