TSA Will Add Screeners for Expected Summer Travel Boom

The Transportation Security Administration is taking a page from the Federal Aviation Administration and being proactive ahead of what is likely to be one of the biggest summer air travel seasons in recent memory.

The FAA last week said it would add more air traffic controllers to Florida airports to help alleviate backups, mostly caused by bad weather, that led to severe delays and cancellations this spring.

Now the TSA is doing much the same.

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According to a story by the Associated Press, TSA Administrator David Pekoske is prepared to send almost 1,000 screeners from his agency who have volunteered to relocate to other airports deemed to be the busiest in the country. The goal is to bolster those high-traffic airports with more TSA agents to offset what is expected to be a high volume of summer passengers.

“We expect this to be a busy summer, and we are as ready as we possibly can be,” Pekoske said at a news conference near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Tuesday. “We’re likely going to exceed in some airports by good measure the 2019 numbers.”

The TSA currently has a little more than 47,000 screeners. It will begin moving employees around from airport to airport when standard wait times in security lines exceed 30 minutes or more, or when the PreCheck line is 10 minutes or more.

Airlines believe they will average 2.5 million customers per day going through airports when the traditional summer travel season kicks off on Memorial Day weekend.