Why Cut So Many Screeners In St. Louis?
The people who run
Lambert Field in St. Louis are hopping mad. The TSA has decided to
drastically cut the number of screeners assigned to St. Louis --
but won't tell airport officials exactly why.
Lambert executives still want answers. So now, they've hired a
Dallas consulting firm to do its own analysis of airport security
needs. The cost: $36,000. When it's all said and done, Lambert
officials plan to compare their findings with those handed down by
the TSA.
The decision from St. Louis came after the TSA announced it
would cut the number of Lambert-based screeners by more than
21-percent -- more than at any other major airport in the country.
At the same time, the number of flights and passengers that pass
through Lambert is going up.
"It concerns us very much," Deputy Airport Director Gerald Slay
told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We just don't know what type of
modeling they used when they did that."
The Dallas-based consultant will "determine the number of
screeners we believe are necessary to staff the checkpoints," Slay
told the St. Louis paper.
The TSA insists there will be no loss in either service or
security. "When you boil it all down, there are two important
messages for the airport, for the congressional delegation, the
people in St. Louis and everyone who enjoys the service of Lambert
Field," TSA Assistant Administrator Mark Hatfield told
interviewers. "We will never allow a degradation in the security
standards that we've set. Second is our commitment to customer
service. That's as true for St. Louis as for any of the 450
airports around the country."
But already, peak-time passengers at Lambert move through
security at the speed of sludge, with average wait times hitting
35-minutes an hour.
"We find that to be quite long," Slay told the Post-Dispatch.
According to Hatfield, the average on-peak wait is 11-minutes.
"[T]hings like this (Lambert situation), whether they're good
decisions or not, the fact that they can't even be articulate about
what they're doing is exactly the kind of thing that's wrong with
TSA," said Jim Carafano, homeland security analyst for the Heritage
Foundation -- a conservative think tank based in Washington, DC.
"The perception is that TSA is not an efficient and effective
organization. If they don't address that, I think it's a long-term
problem for the agency."