Holiday season could stretch TSA screening lines at XNA

Officer Nic Vatalaro (right) with the Transportation Security Administration checks bags Thursday for Hannah Taylor as she passes through security at Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in Highfill.
Officer Nic Vatalaro (right) with the Transportation Security Administration checks bags Thursday for Hannah Taylor as she passes through security at Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in Highfill.

Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport managers aren't expecting travelers to wait in long lines for security screening, but said that may not be the case when passengers reach the major hub airports on their journeys.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette

Officer Kaylene Campbell with the Transportation Security Administration operates an X-ray machine Thursday at the security checkpoint at Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in Highfill.

"I think we're going to be okay," said Kelly Johnson, airport director. "We really haven't been experiencing what some of the bigger communities have been experiencing. Those hub airports are getting hammered. A long wait for us is 20 or 21 minutes -- and that's rare."

TSA PreCheck

The Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport is hosting an enrollment session from 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. June 6-10 and June 13-17 for the Transportation Security Administration screening program.

The program enables identified, low-risk air travelers to go through screening faster. Travelers enrolled in the program do not have to remove shoes, liquids, laptops, light outerwear or belts. There are more than 450 expedited screening lanes at 167 U.S. airports.

Applicants are urged to enroll online at www.identogo.com/ XNA.aspx. Location should be “Bentonville, Arkansas” then applicants should choose “1 Airport Blvd, Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport.” Appointment times are filled. Walk-ins are welcome and encouraged to fill out information online before going to the airport.

To complete the application process at the airport, applicants will need to provide proof of identity and U.S. citizenship documentation, such as a birth certificate and a driver’s license. Applicants with a valid passport require no other identification.

Visit www.tsa.gov/tsa-pre… for a complete list of acceptable documents.

The application process is completed at the airport where fingerprints are taken for a background check and the $85 fee for five years in the program is paid. The fee can be paid by credit card, money order, company check or certified or cashier’s check. Cash and personal checks are not accepted.

Source: TSA

Thousands of people missed flights because of the lengthy wait times in recent weeks, according to news reports. On May 15, nearly 500 people were stranded at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

Airlines are warning passengers to expect long security lines and advising them to arrive at least two hours early or risk missing their flights at large airports throughout the country.

The lines have been blamed in part on more travelers during the busy summer travel season and a shortage of screening officers manning checkpoints.

Some woes have been attributed to fewer people than anticipated applying for the government's PreCheck program, which allows passengers to move through security faster after submitting to a background check.

Some 65 percent of XNA's traffic consists of travelers visiting to do business with Wal-Mart, J.B. Hunt Transport, Tyson Foods and other local companies. Many of those are seasoned business travelers who take advantage of the TSA's expedited screening system.

"We're got the PreCheck line that will be staffed when there's a demand," Johnson said. "It really helps get the business people through."

Enrollment in PreCheck will be available June 6-10 and June 13-17 at XNA.

The TSA, anticipating PreCheck would speed up airport screenings, reduced its screener staff nationally by 10 percent in the past three years. When fewer fliers than expected enrolled in the program, the agency tried to make up for that shortfall by randomly moving passengers into the express lanes. But it recently scaled back on that for fear dangerous passengers were slipping through.

That's when the time it took to pass through checkpoints started lengthening, reaching up to 90 minutes in some cases.

The agency is shifting some resources to address the long lines at the nation's biggest airports, but it says with the high number of fliers expected this summer, solving the problem won't be easy.

Airlines for America, the industry trade group for the nation's leading airlines, released its summer air travel forecast last week, predicting passenger volumes this summer to jump 4 percent over record passenger volume during the same period in 2015.

Johnson said she would like to see more of that action at her airport.

"It's been flat, year-to-date. We'd like to see some growth. Nationally, ticket prices are down a little bit so we're hoping we become a beneficiary of that," Johnson said. "The thing we're seeing is of the people who are taking summer vacations, over 70 percent are going by car because fuel prices are so low and I think that may be impacting some of the numbers that we've been seeing."

The Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport is able to retain more than 75 percent of the traffic from its draw area. The "leakage" is primarily leisure travelers looking for lower fares. Travelers from the region not flying out of XNA have historically gone mostly to Tulsa, Okla., with some going to Fort Smith or Little Rock.

In Little Rock. the state's largest airport will have enough TSA staffing to avoid excessively long lines at passenger security checkpoints this summer, a top agency official said last week.

"We're well prepared, in my opinion," said Carlos De La Torre, assistant federal security director in Arkansas for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Little Rock-area air travelers don't seem to be taking any chances, though. Officials at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field report an uptick in enrollment in the TSA's PreCheck program.

Airport officials also said last week that a monitoring system at the security checkpoints has detected no unusual increase in the time it takes passengers to go through the checkpoints even as more passengers are using the airport than a year ago.

The long waits were one reason Kelly Hoggan, head of security operations at the TSA, was replaced last week.

Darby LaJoye was named to replace Hoggan as as the Acting Assistant Administrator of the Office of Security Operations.

LaJoye has led security operations at two of the nation's largest airports, Los Angeles International and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

On Wednesday, TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger told lawmakers the lengthy wait times were "preventable" and the fault lies with the agency, which was not prepared for the recent surge in air travel. Neffenger said insufficient funding and lack of manpower are to blame.

Appearing before the House Homeland Security Committee, Neffenger said staffing levels have been cut 12 percent since he was assigned to his post last year. The agency, which has 45,000 employees, was scheduled to cut 1,600 more positions this year.

The TSA projects that 740 million passengers will pass through its screening process this year, up from 643 million just a few years ago.

Neffenger said an additional 768 TSA workers would be ready to work by the middle of June.

NW News on 05/28/2016

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