Checked-bag fees blamed for long airport lines

Tribune News Service

Airlines could help reduce lengthy security lines by suspending checked baggage fees this summer or diverting fee revenues to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), some aviation experts and congressional members contend.
Long security lines at major airports have led to thousands of missed flights in recent weeks, and some say TSA’s screening problems stem, in part, from increased carry-on baggage volumes as passengers try to avoid airlines’ checked-bag fees.
Passengers are carrying as much luggage through security as they can, said Art Kosatka, CEO of Olney, Md.-based aviation consulting firm TranSecure Inc. And Congress’s failure to adequately fund and staff TSA’s security operations doesn’t help, said Jim Hall, a former National Transportation Safety Board chairman and Washington, DC-based consultant.
“You have the airlines economically benefiting, Congress trying to deal with deficits and in the middle is the customer who is inconvenienced,” Hall said.
Airline officials and advocates deny being part of the problem, pointing out that baggage fees originated in 2008 and TSA’s security line problems developed more recently.
“There is absolutely no data to suggest a causal relationship between airfare pricing and recent unacceptable security wait times,” Melanie Hinton, a spokeswoman for airline trade group Airlines for America, said.
Kerry Philipovitch, senior vice president of customer experience at American Airlines, testified last week before a congressional subcommittee and attributed screening delays to TSA’s PreCheck program failing to meet enrollment goals and staffing problems at the agency, including high security officer attrition rates and difficulties hiring new officers.
Staffing levels and funding are being studied as part of congressional investigations of the TSA.
The number of full-time security officers fell from more than 47,000 in 2013 to slightly more than 42,500 this year, and TSA’s overall budget decreased from a high of $7.8 billion in fiscal year 2012 to $7.38 billion in fiscal year 2015. Airlines, meanwhile, collected $3.8 billion in baggage fees in 2015, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., offered another idea in a letter sent last month to executives at 12 major airlines: Suspend baggage fees during the summer’s busy travel season.
Such fees increase the number of bags that need to be screened at checkpoints, according to the letter. TSA reported a 27 percent increase in roller bags moving through security at checkpoints that serve airlines with baggage fees versus those that don’t. Airline officials said they have diverted staff and millions of dollars in resources to TSA functions that aren’t security-related. They argue that eliminating baggage fees would only lead to more checked bags, not shorter security lines or airport wait times.
“We have concluded that increasing the number of checked bags will only shift the wait-time problem to the checked-luggage screening area and will not solve TSA’s current challenges,” Delta Air Lines CEO Edward H. Bastian wrote in a letter to Blumenthal and Markey.
Hinton wrote in a statement that members of Congress could improve security wait times by reallocating how they spend revenue from the $5.60 security fee airline passengers pay.
Congress in 2013 voted to divert about $13 billion in security fee revenue to deficit reduction over a 10-year period “rather than where it should be directed toward: effective and efficient screening that protects the traveling public,” the statement said.