With travelers, airports and airlines increasingly irate over lengthening lines and wait times at the nation’s airport security checkpoints, House Homeland Security Committee member Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) on Thursday introduced a bill aimed at reducing wait times.
The Checkpoint Optimization and Efficiency Act of 2016 calls for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to finish an ongoing assessment of its staffing allocation model to best position its human resources at airport checkpoints. The six-page bill also calls for the agency to include the use of canine explosive detection teams and technology as part of the assessment, which would be due within 30 days of the bill becoming law.
Katko is chairman of the panel’s Transportation Security Subcommittee. The bipartisan bill is co-sponsored by Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the subcommittee.
The bill also calls for TSA to make better use of its human capital, including requiring its Behavior Detection Officers be used for traveler document verification, which is something TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger has given his airport federal security directors discretion to do. And the measure calls for FSDs to have the authority and flexibility to have more discretion over checkpoint and checked baggage staffing and overtime.
“This bipartisan bill provides needed transparency, accountability, and reform to the front lines of airport passenger screening, and upon enactment, will immediately help alleviate the crushing wait times being experienced by the traveling public across the country,” Katko said in a statement.
Neffenger on Wednesday told the committee that wait times at two major airports have decreased of late due to more staffing and better staff allocation decisions. Neffenger has blamed the increased wait times on a number of factors, including reduced staffing the past few years while travel volume has increased, and a renewed emphasis on security as the expense of passenger convenience in some cases.
The bill says it is not “prioritizing wait times over security effectiveness.”