Only Philadelphia and Atlanta made the lists more often, 34 and 32 times respectively.ĭenver’s biggest lines come at peak departure times. 30, DIA made the top 10 longest wait times in all three categories 30 times. The TSA measures wait times three ways – overall monthly average, peak time average and longest monthly waits.ĭIA ranks high in all three. There are three security checkpoints at DIA, the nation’s fifth-busiest airport. “If I pull up and there’s not any parking, I know it’s going to be bad.” “It depends on the time of day,” said regular flier Don Springer, of Boulder. “It looks like they’ve changed some things.” “I think it’s shortened in the last month or so,” said Jan Coble, of Westminster, who travels regularly to San Jose and Oakland. Last week, Harmon said, 90 percent got through within 10 minutes.įrequent fliers said they’ve seen a difference. The measures have begun to pay off, said Carrie Harmon, the TSA’s spokeswoman in Denver.īefore the moves, only 70 percent of Denver’s passengers waited in line 10 minutes or less. The measures included shifting personnel to different locations and changing work schedules. Since we put these measures into place, we have had a reduction in wait times.” “We realize we have some challenges in Denver, so we sent some optimization teams there. volume of passengers,” said Sterling Payne, a TSA spokeswoman. The agency has sent a team to Denver three times in the past six months to study the problem and make recommendations for improving efficiency. To help cope, DIA is building two new screening lanes at the Concourse A bridge that the TSA has agreed to staff, an addition that may become permanent.īut the TSA says it’s not simply a matter of throwing more bodies into the breach – it’s where and when the screeners are deployed. Thanksgiving travel provides a big spike in passenger numbers and the Christmas holiday period brings crowds as well. A week ago, all nine members of the state’s congressional delegation wrote to the Transportation Security Administration, which handles screening at airports, with a request that it assign 58 more workers to DIA as the holiday season approaches. In fact, Colorado officials believe the long waits could hurt tourism and business. To mangle an old travel motto, getting there is no longer half the fun. “We used to be the bottom two-thirds of wait times and we’ve increased significantly from that,” said DIA spokeswoman Sally Covington. Â ¢ On 16 occasions in September, the wait time at DIA was 45 minutes or longer.Īt a time when passengers are being advised to arrive two hours before their flight time and to check their bags at least 45 minutes before, the added time doing nothing but standing in line can add anxiety and anger to the flying experience. Â ¢ Denver’s average wait during peak travel times in the last year was just over 20 minutes. That beat the second-place line at New York’s JFK, where a two-hour wait was recorded two months ago. Â ¢ Last December, DIA had the longest wait of all airports for the entire year – a line that took two and a half hours to get to screening. If you’re reading this while waiting in line at DIA, here are a few numbers to pass your time: Those findings, outlined in a federal statistical report and the airport’s own records, have security officials scrambling to tweak screening procedures and the state’s congressional delegation pleading for more guards. In addition, the number of times that the wait to go through the metal detectors exceeded a half-hour has skyrocketed. Denver International Airport had the longest security wait times during peak travel periods of all large airports in the most recent fiscal year.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |