Air passengers have seen some changes recently at the security checkpoints at Tucson International Airport. There’s more to come, as the airport remodels the terminal beginning this year and plans to move and expand the checkpoints by early 2017.
The pace of those moves, staffing levels and screening policy changes could affect how long you stand in line for your next flight.
For now, Tucson passengers are getting used to full-body scanners that the U.S. Transportation Security Administration installed at TIA in September and gradually brought on line in time for the holiday travel season.
While the TSA has used full-body scanners since 2010, Tucson was left out because there wasn’t enough room in TIA’s narrow security corridors for the first generation of so-called backscatter X-ray body scanners.
Those machines were gradually removed by 2013, amid health concerns over radiation exposure and objections to the detailed, naked body images they displayed to screeners.
Their replacements, known as millimeter-wave scanners, emit a kind of electromagnetic radiation that is deemed safer, and they don’t display a detailed body image.
And one fits into each of TIA’s two concourse security checkpoints, along with a metal detector, baggage X-ray line and other equipment.
“It’s still a little bit of wedge, but it’s better security and the customers love it,” said Charles Sparks, TSA assistant federal security director in Tucson.
By the spring of 2017, Sparks said, the security checkpoints will be relocated and widened to four lanes as part of a terminal reconfiguration project, from three lanes in the current narrow corridors.
With the new scanners, instead of a nude-like image shown by the X-ray scanners, operators see only a generic body outline of a man or woman. If the device finds a suspicious item, a red screen comes up and a box is superimposed over the suspicious area, resulting in a pat-down of that area only. If the scanner detects no suspicious items, the screen lights up green and the passenger is waved on.
Until recently, passengers could turn down a body scan and instead submit to a pat-down search. A week before Christmas, the TSA changed its policy so that some passengers may not be allowed to opt out of the scans.
Though some passengers still object to any scanning, the machines are popular with many travelers because they don’t require passengers to remove their shoes, Sparks said, noting that the process is already familiar to frequent fliers.
People with artificial joints and other metallic medical implants also like the new scanners, because they can usually eliminate the need for a pat-down search.
Sparks said the TSA never guarantees that any traveler won’t be subject to pat-downs or other screening measures, because the agency routinely makes random, detailed checks of passengers as part of is overall security procedure.
That includes random checks of passengers enrolled in the TSA’s PreCheck program, or its international version, Global Entry, which allow passengers expedited screening without removing items such as shoes, belts and laptops in some cases.
“There’s always a randomization aspect to everything we do,” Sparks said.
EFFECT ON WAIT TIMES
The effect of body scanners on security wait times is unclear, another TSA official said.
“In terms of time, between the machine and traditional screening, it’s kind of negligible,” said Nico Melendez, a TSA spokesman. “While there might be extra time associated with the machine, the assumption is we’re cutting down the amount of time we spend on patdowns.”
Wait times are mainly a function of passenger loads and staffing, and the TSA constantly monitors flight departures to have the most lanes open when they’re needed, Sparks said.
“We are staffed according to flight schedules. We get staffing numbers every year, so if you gain flights, or lose flights, that’s factored in,” he said.
At TIA, the TSA staffs its checkpoints most fully between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., when there’s a big push of Southwest Airlines, American and Delta flights. Some staffers are added around the noon hour and again between 3 to 4 p.m. to accommodate clusters of departures, Sparks added.
The lines for TSA’s PreCheck program are open when the checkpoints are operating at full staff and at other times as staff is available, Sparks said.
Nationally, a TSA official told The Wall Street Journal last month that hours of PreCheck lanes had been cut as the number of enrollees has flattened.
The TSA doesn’t disclose average security wait times for particular airports, but the agency posts wait times as submitted by passengers at MyTSA.com.
Security wait times at TIA are usually 20 minutes or less, and often 10 minutes or less, but they can grow to 30 minutes or more during peak times, according to MyTSA.
But security, not speed, is the TSA’s top priority, TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger told Congress last year after major failures during testing of checkpoint security cost his predecessor his job.
PASSENGERS SAID
TO BE SATISFIED
Tucson passengers seem to be pleased overall with the airport’s security process. In a TIA passenger satisfaction survey presented to the Tucson Airport Authority board in December, 98 percent of passengers said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the screening waiting time, while 94 percent were satisfied with the screening process and 97.5 percent were happy with the courtesy of TSA employees.
Staffing levels have been an issue at some airports, according to union officials who have sparred with TSA management over related issues like mandatory overtime.
TSA employees voted in 2012 to be represented by the American Federation of Government Employees, though they can’t bargain for wages and hours. TSA uses a lower wage scale than the federal general-services scale, with officers starting at about $25,500 annually, not including local differential pay.
OVERCOMING ATTRITION
Sparks said the TSA at the Tucson airport is nearly fully staffed at about 200 employees, though he is still awaiting a few more officers trained to use the new body scanners.
The Tucson operation typically loses one or two employees per month, Sparks said. Some have gone to the U.S. Border Patrol, which has hiring hundreds of new agents in recent years and pays more.
Melendez said the TSA’s overall employee attrition rate is about 20 percent, far higher than the overall rate for federal employees.
Part of the reason for that, Melendez said, is that TSA positions require few qualifications, such as a high school diploma, and they are touted as a stepping stone to other government jobs.
“This is promoted as a springboard to a federal career,” Melendez said, adding that many TSA officers move on to the FBI, the Secret Service or the Federal Air Marshal Service. TSA officers are unarmed and rely on local law enforcement to handle lawbreakers.
“We take pride in the fact that some of the other agencies want our employees because they have a proven track record.”
Some TSA employees are in it for the long haul.
Tucson TSA officer Jeri Feagan joined the TSA in 2002 in Omaha, Nebraska, after being a stay-at-home mom and working in various customer-service and office jobs. Feagan, 57, came to Tucson last March with her husband, a retired carpenter, and transferred to TIA.
“I wanted to work for government, with good benefits, all that. TSA just happened to be forming, and security at the airport just sounded really good. I felt I could come in here and do a good job and help keep the skies safe,” she recalled.
Feagan said she likes the job, though it has its drawbacks.
“I like working with the public, teaching people how the process works, and I think I’m good at it,” she said. “The worst thing is just the hours, working holidays, working weekends, but we all knew that when we signed up.”
TRAINED TO KEEP
THEIR COOL
Feagan said passengers can sometimes get testy but she doesn’t let that bother her.
“That makes it stressful sometimes but we’ve had a lot of training on how to keep our cool, how to handle somebody like that, and if anything ever gets out of hand we know we’re not alone,” she said.
Feagan’s most unusual checkpoint find came while working in Omaha: “They actually thought they could bring a cattle prod on an airliner.”
An official of a union representing TSA employees in Arizona said the agency has shrunk since its inception in 2002, when it was so heavily staffed in the frenzy following 9/11 that some joked that TSA stood for “Thousands Standing Around.”
“Through the years they’ve gone through a large attrition which was probably appropriate, to an extent,” said Dennis Piert, executive vice president of the AFGE Local 1250 in Phoenix and a TSA officer since 2002.
But Piert said the union has complained about the agency’s practice of mandatory overtime, contending such practices could be minimized by proper staffing and scheduling.
CATCHING WEAPONS
The TSA took a huge hit to its credibility last June, when Homeland Security inspectors were able to sneak fake bombs and weapons past TSA checkpoints in 67 of 70 tests. That resulted in the firing of the TSA’s acting director, a program to retrain officers and new calls to beef up staff.
Sparks said TSA officers in Tucson take their jobs very seriously and frequently find weapons and other banned items.
TSA officials point out the thousands of guns and other weapons they find every year, including in Tucson. A dozen guns were found at TIA in 2014, up from eight in 2013, according to TSA data compiled by the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative.
The TSA confiscated 75 guns at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in 2014, the fourth-highest total in the nation.
And the TSA has found explosives in at least one case in Arizona. In 2011, TSA officials at the Yuma airport found a small amount of C4 plastic explosive in the bag of an Army soldier who had been in explosives training. He was arrested, though no malicious intent was found.
