Passenger Numbers Down, But Worker Ranks Remain Steady

The airlines are cutting back, airplane manufacturers are cutting back, and there's even talk of delaying NASA's constellation program. But there's one corner of the transportation industry that's continuing full-steam ahead, regardless of the economy.

If you couldn't guess, it's the US Transportation Security Administration.

In Mississippi, the Hattiesburg American newspaper studied the correlation between airline passenger traffic and security staffing around the state. It reports Mississippi's seven major airports saw an overall decline of about 23,000 passenger emplanements from January through the end of November, representing a drop of about two percent for the first 11 months of last year.

But Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman in the Miami office of the Transportation Security Administration, told the paper, quote - "There are no plans for reducing our staff."

She added that there's more to the TSA than what we see at airports. About 50,000 agency employees patrol and control the nation's transportation systems and training programs, and supervise grant applications.

"Air, land and sea," Koshetz said. "We're pretty much anything that has to do with transportation."

Koshetz declined to mention the exact number of security officers working at airports, citing security reasons.

Those employees will have lighter duty for a while. According to the US Department of Transportation, domestic airline passenger counts were down 1.5 percent for the first five months of 2008, compared to the same period in 2007. For the first seven months of last year, the number of flights was down 2.1 percent.

Has anybody noticed the lines getting any shorter?

FMI: www.tsa.gov