Airport officials, feds reach deal on screeners

Jace Radke

Monday, June 9, 2003 | 11:08 a.m.

Officials at McCarran International Airport and the Transportation Security Administration have come to a compromise as to how many screeners are needed to get passengers through the airport without hours of waiting.

"From an operational and security standpoint we are going to have what we need to do our job and continue to provide good service," McCarran Federal Security Director Jim Blair said.

What the airport needs is 895 screeners for checkpoints, baggage screening and gate screening, Blair said. That's a loss of 88 positions.

In April the TSA announced that it would cut 6,000 screeners from the nation's 55,600 by September, as a result of a cut of more than $1 billion that dropped the agency's budget to $4.82 billion for 2004.

McCarran was slated to lose 149 screeners from its April total of 983, but the TSA is now planning to cut only 17, after 71 screeners were lost at McCarran due to attrition over the last six weeks.

McCarran officials were concerned that losing 149 screeners would cripple the airport's ability to ensure bearable waits in line for security. During peak times passengers can already wait for more than an hour in lines at security checkpoints.

"We were concerned because we didn't know why they were proposing these kinds of cuts, but now they've shared the details of the model they used," Clark County Aviation Deputy Director Rosemary Vassiliadis said. "It takes into account baggage, checkpoints and gate screening."

Some of the procedures used by the TSA have been revised to ensure that enough screeners are shifted to checkpoint duties at McCarran, which ranks only behind Los Angeles International Airport as the busiest airport in the world in terms of numbers of passengers originating or finishing a trip.

About 92 percent of McCarran's 36 million annual passengers go through the security checkpoints for their flights, with only 8 percent of the passengers making connecting flights that don't require a trip through screening.

"We are relying on more technology for our baggage screening, and that cuts down on the amount of people we need," Vassiliadis said.

Track systems and in-line explosives detection machines will continue to be added to McCarran, and the number of screeners needed at the airport will continue to fluctuate, officials said.

"The 895 is a snapshot in time," Blair said. "It's what we need right now."