The U.S. Transportation Security Administration plans to experiment with "further segmentation of passengers by risk" beyond its Precheck program in the coming months, but travelers who pay for Precheck will continue to get their money's worth, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said.
Speaking with BTN in an interview following his mainstage appearance at the Global Business Travel Association's annual convention last week, Pekoske, who just completed his first year as TSA administrator, said airports around the country are investing in larger checkpoints, which gives the TSA more flexibility in how its screening lines are structured. Besides adequate staffing for Precheck passengers, that also could include lanes for travelers who are not registered in trusted traveler programs but go through other methods of advanced screening prior to the checkpoint, such as with a canine, he said.
"Canines are very good at detecting all the things we are worried about, in detecting explosive and chemicals," Pekoske said. "If they are prescreened by a canine, we can give them a lesser level of security scrutiny than a passenger we have no information on."
At the same time, the TSA is working with airports to improve screening technology, including its announcement in recent weeks that it is testing new CT scanners. It began testing the machines in Phoenix and Boston last year and recently deployed them to 13 additional airports, with plans to have 40 units in place by the end of the year and more than 145 in airports by the end of the 2019 fiscal year. The scanners, which can detect explosives and other dangerous items through 3D imaging, eventually could negate the need for any passengers to remove laptops or liquids from their luggage.
The TSA also has worked to expand automated screening lanes, of which there are over 140 at more than a dozen airports, and testing biometric identification technology.
However, the TSA has no intent of diluting the appeal of Precheck with these efforts, Pekoske said. Even if the CT technology, for example, made removing laptops and liquids from luggage unnecessary, non-Precheck passengers still would need to remove shoes, belts and jackets as a part of the body anomaly screening, he said. In addition, standard lanes would still, by design, have more bag searches and pat-downs, which slow them down.
As such, the TSA aims to keep waiting time in Precheck lanes to 10 minutes or less, while its goal for standard lanes is 20 minutes or less.
"When passengers show up at a checkpoint and look at the Precheck lane and the standard lane, it may be the case that the Precheck lane is longer, but statistically, Precheck will still take you half of the time," Pekoske said. "With the Precheck brand, if you want more people to go in, you have to keep that incentive."
Like his predecessor, Pekoske aims to boost Precheck enrollment and is looking for ways to make it more convenient to enroll. One possibility will be to bring enrollment opportunities to airport lounges, where there are frequent travelers who "are the travelers we really want to get into Precheck," he said. The TSA also wants to work more closely with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and integrate with its Global Entry program, including sharing resources and pointing registering travelers to the program that best suits their needs.
Global Outreach
In addition, the TSA is looking at ways to improve the process through cooperation with non-U.S. carriers and airports, Pekoske said. That includes "trying very hard to have much more dialogue with them" to share threat information and share some of the TSA's own standard procedures that it has not in the past, he said. One effort has been working with airports and carriers to move security requirements from airline gates to security checkpoints.
"It's better for security, and many of those gates have never been designed to be used for large screening activities," Pekoske said. "We've had a lot more cooperation, seeing if we can't synchronize some of our procedures."
Defending "Quiet Skies"
From the main stage, Pekoske defended one of the TSA's more controversial programs, Quiet Skies, which came to light in a recent report by The Boston Globe. Under that program, the TSA flags certain travelers, including some U.S. citizens, that are not on the No-Fly List but have travel patterns or links to people who are on watch lists. In March, that program grew to include assigning air marshals to observe those travelers at airports and on airplanes.
Pekoske said the program "makes an awful lot of sense. We ought to be placing our limited security resources on those flights where individuals present some risks to all of the other travelers at 30,000 feet." He added that it "is not a surveillance program or a program that profiles individuals."
Changing a Core Value
Under Pekoske, the TSA also has worked to generate more dialogue between officers and passengers, he said. The administration in April changed one of the core values it uses in making hiring decisions from "innovation" to "respect." As a part of that, the administration has tried to encourage passengers to ask questions about security requirements, including through Twitter, while in line, before reaching the checkpoint, he said.
Pekoske also encouraged travelers to acknowledge the officers' work when passing through checkpoints.
"Respect is bidirectional, and we really are trying to be much more conversational with passengers," Pekoske told BTN. "If you have a conversation, that by definition is better security, [compared to] having your heads down and not having eye contact."