Six solutions to long security queues in America’s airports

By A.W. | WASHINGTON, DC

THE embattled Transportation Security Administration (TSA) faced its first big test of the season this past weekend, when Americans kicked off their summer travel over Memorial Day. Remarkably for an agency that has lurched from one crisis to another, it passed. Lines were unusually tolerable at airports across the country. But bigger tests are coming. The peak of summer travel is expected to bring long security queues to America’s big airports, due largely to a shortage of TSA screeners and unrealistic predictions about the number of people willing to pay to join the agency's PreCheck programme, which allows for expedited security checks.

Fortunately, it seems just about everyone has a solution. Politicians have come up with a few, but the past several days have featured more novel approaches. Here, from a variety of professional perspectives, are a number of ways the situation could be improved.

The economists’ solution

Two economists, Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard and Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, wrote in the New York Times that the problem is a simple economic one. When you wait an hour in a security line, that is an hour you could otherwise have spent earning money and contributing to the economy. You feel the negative effects, and to some small extent so does the American economy. But the TSA does not. When it cuts staff, and still prevents weapons from making it onto aeroplanes, it can claim that it has managed to do as good a job as ever while saving money. The challenge, then, is to make longer lines have a tangible impact on the agency.

One change is already in the works. TSA administrator Peter Neffenger has announced that the agency would begin this month to post real-time security-queue data on its app, myTSA. That will not only allow flyers to plan their arrival time at the airport; the transparency will also increase pressure on the TSA to shrink lines, and could even inspire airports to emulate those competitors which manage to post shorter wait times. But that will probably not, in and of itself, be enough. So the onus is also on the TSA’s bosses—Congress and the executive branch—to push the agency to prioritise waiting times as much as cost savings and security.

The career counsellor’s solution

Anyone who has ever passed through airport security can tell that being a TSA screener is not the most fun job. What is less obvious are some of the other drawbacks, beyond the stress and tedium. Many TSA employees are hired on a part-time basis, and they earn low salaries and bonuses. The result is poor morale among screeners and a high attrition rate—which isn’t helping the already low staffing levels. One bill before Congress would extend certain labour protections to TSA workers. But full-time employment and better pay might also lead to steadier staffing and more efficient screening.

The pilot’s solution

Patrick Smith, who authors the Ask the Pilot blog, posits a counterintuitive approach: “TSA doesn’t need more personnel at the checkpoint, it needs fewer.” He argues that government resources are being badly mis-deployed, with too much money and time being spent rifling through bags in search of tubes of toothpaste that exceed the size limits. That approach, he notes, has done next to nothing to thwart terrorist plots, and they have made airport visits both time-consuming and miserable. Instead, the government should focus its resources on tracking and detecting security threats before they get to the TSA checkpoints. “The real job of protecting planes from terrorists doesn’t belong to concourse screeners,” he writes. “It happens backstage, so to speak, with TSA, FBI, and intelligence entities working together to break up plots and capture suspects before they get to the airport. Once a terrorist reaches the terminal, chances are that he or she has figured out a way to skirt whatever safeguards we have in place.”

The architect’s solution

This can be summed up in three words: design better airports. Last month, a tragicomically long TSA line at Midway International Airport in Chicago bred a viral YouTube video, in which it takes the correspondent over two minutes to walk from the front of a queue that snakes through the airport terminal to join the back. The footage heaped additional notoriety on the less-than-beloved airport. It is no coincidence that Midway comes third on Thrillist’s new ranking of the 10 worst-designed airports in America. Layout goes a long way toward determining whether TSA inefficiency is merely annoying or outright incapacitating. Tegel Airport in Berlin—which was supposed to close years ago to make way for its long-delayed successor, Berlin Brandenburg—is a nightmare to staff with its individual security checks at each gate. But it's a breeze for passengers, who can waltz straight to the gate. Airports with one or two big, centralised security checkpoints, by contrast, are a recipe for hellish lines.

The canine solution

The human species, even aided by the increasingly advanced machines it builds, has its limitations. Dogs are still far better at sniffing explosives than man-made contraptions are at detecting them. That’s why the United States spent more than $120m on canine detection last year. Of course they have a few drawbacks, like occasional aggressive behaviour and an insatiable hunger for treats that can lead to false positives. (A recent report looking at the efficacy of sniffer dogs at Manchester airport in Britain found that they were masters at fingering passengers carrying illicit cheese and sausages, but less good at uncovering those with cocaine and heroin.) But even with all the advanced technology humankind has developed, this old-fashioned solution might still be the best we’ve got. If the canine programme continues to improve dogs' ability to detect explosives, TSA screeners might be able to stop worrying so much about liquids and gels and focus on screening for weapons—a much faster and less invasive process.

The debtor’s solution

As the Guardianpoints out, the TSA has had its share of screw-ups, but there is only so much it can do with the limited funding it has been granted. One simple solution would be to undo a mistake Congress made in 2013 as part of a measure to ward off a government shutdown. Since then, 60 cents from the $5.60 security fee travellers pay for each leg of a flight goes not to the TSA, but to the Treasury to pay down the national debt. There are many sensible ways to reduce America’s debt, but a surcharge on flyers is not one of them. If that money were restored to the TSA, it would amount to more than $1 billion per year—enough to hire lots of (full-time) screeners and shorten those aggravating queues.