The state's largest airport will have enough Transportation Security Administration staffing to avoid excessively long lines at passenger security checkpoints during what airlines say will be a record summer-travel year, a top agency official said last week.
"We're well prepared, in my opinion," said Carlos De La Torre, assistant federal security director in Arkansas for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Little Rock-area air travelers don't seem to be taking any chances, though. Officials at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field report an uptick in enrollment in the TSA's PreCheck program, which provides expedited security checks for enrollees.
Airport officials also said last week that a monitoring system at the security checkpoints has detected no unusual increase in the time it takes passengers to go through the checkpoints even as more passengers are using the airport than a year ago.
The situation at the Little Rock airport appears in sharp contrast to major airports around the nation, where airlines warn passengers to expect long security lines and advise them to arrive at least two hours early or risk missing their flights.
The TSA, anticipating that PreCheck would speed up airport screenings, reduced its screener staff by 10 percent in the past three years. When fewer fliers than expected enrolled in the program, the agency tried to make up for that shortfall by randomly moving passengers into the express lanes. But it recently scaled back on that for fear that dangerous passengers were slipping through.
That's when the time it took to pass through checkpoints started lengthening, reaching up to 90 minutes in some cases.
The agency is shifting some resources to address the long lines at the nation's biggest airports, but it says that with the high number of fliers expected this summer, solving the problem won't be easy.
Airlines for America, the industry trade group for the nation's leading airlines, released its summer air travel forecast last week, predicting passenger volumes this summer to jump 4 percent over record passenger volume during the same period in 2015.
De La Torre spoke at a meeting last week of the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission, which sets policy for Clinton National.
Ron Mathieu, the airport's executive director, asked De La Torre: "We've all been watching the news media, and we've seen what's happening in Chicago and other places, and that the concern that many people have is, what is the state of TSA here in Little Rock and do we anticipate we will see those kinds of lines and kinds of issues here in Little Rock?"
De La Torre said that back in February his agency anticipated a surge in summer travel and hired a dozen new screeners. They were vetted by a committee and participated in some on-the-job training to ensure that they knew what to expect in performing their jobs. Then they were sent to an agency academy for formal training. Two remain in training and will begin work soon, he said.
De La Torre also said the agency staff has worked with airlines and airport staff members to coordinate staffing schedules with the airport's busiest times.
"We've engaged with our carriers, we've engaged with our airports on opening and closing times to accommodate their schedules," he said. "We have very engaged technicians at our checkpoints to prevent any equipment delays. With all that said, I feel we're in very, very good shape here this summer."
Mathieu told the commission that a system the airport set up to monitor passenger times getting through checkpoints hasn't detected any long delays.
"We look at those every day, and we have not seen any processing times out of line with what we normally see," he said.
Last month, the latest figures available, 159,545 passengers passed through the airport, a 1.22 percent increase over April 2015, according to data supplied by the airport. Through the first four months of this year, 591,262 passengers passed through Clinton National, an increase of almost 2 percent over the same period in 2015.
Also last month, new PreCheck enrollments at the airport totaled 348, a number exceeded only by the July 2015 number, 353.
That month was the first full month of operation for an on-site PreCheck enrollment center at Clinton National. Passengers can make appointments or simply walk in. Nearly 3,000 people had enrolled at the center through April, according to airport data.
The program is available to U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. The $85 fee buys enrollees five years in the program. Enrollees typically don't have to remove their shoes, belts or light jackets or remove liquids and laptops from their luggage, which is often the case when passing through the regular screening process.
Once approved for the program, each traveler receives a "Known Traveler Number" and can use PreCheck lanes at security checkpoints in more than 160 participating domestic airports and on a dozen major airlines.
When booking their flights, enrollees must enter their Known Traveler Numbers on each reservation.
Business is brisk for the PreCheck program at the Little Rock airport, said Charlie Jones, the airport's operations director.
The airport has been "averaging 14 to 20 enrollees per day since inception," he told the commission at its Wednesday meeting. "Yesterday, we ran 58 one day. That is the second-highest. It is beat out by only the first day, when we ran 62."
Information for this article was contributed by Hunter Field of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and by staff members of The Associated Press.
Metro on 05/23/2016