Word: tsa
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...passengers on connecting flights--have not been adopted. The congressional mandate to install 2,200 explosive-detection devices in all 429 airports by the end of the year has been scaled down; the new Transportation Security Administration does plan to buy almost 5,000 trace-detection devices. The TSA is having trouble recruiting more than 40,000 new screeners. So far, government-trained screeners have taken up positions in exactly one airport...
...More bad news reached the pilots from Washington, where last week Kenneth Mead, the Department of Transportation's Inspector General, delivered a scathing report to Congress on the Transportation Security Administration - the new agency tasked with protecting commercial aviation. Mead said the TSA would not acquire enough explosive detection machines to screen every bag by Dec. 31, as Congress has mandated. (A TSA spokesman says the agency intends to meet the deadline.) Mead predicted that because of its free-spending ways, the TSA would likely run out of money by next month...
...questioned why an agency on a tight budget would plan to rent 2,700 sq.-ft. offices (at an average of $85 per sq. ft.) for each of its 81 top airport security directors. The TSA says it expects Congress to approve a $4.4 billion supplemental budget request, and that it hasn't decided on offices. Mead's testimony only increased the pilots? sense of vulnerability. "Three thousand people died on Sept. 11 because eight pilots were killed," says Luckey. "Little has been done since then to provide effective protection...
...such disruption two weeks ago, an airline-industry executive went to Home Depot, bought a device that locks a plug into an outlet and gave it to an official of the new Transportation Security Administration. Rather than buy the devices for all the airports that need them, however, the TSA simply suggested that its employees purchase the device and get reimbursed later...
...some fear that the new agency's tough policies could cripple a system that handles 670 million passengers a year. "The TSA has to allow security people to use their judgment," says David Plavin, who represents airport managers and owners. The system is no good, Plavin says, if it's "so rigid that people don't even want to negotiate...