Fifty-eight security officers and four bomb-sniffing canine teams are being sent to O’Hare International Airport to help with excruciatingly long lines at security check points.
The Transportation Security Administartion has announced plans to hire about 800 new officers this month, as well as to pay for more part-time workers and overtime in an effort to reduce lengthy wait times at security checkpoints.
However, the union that represents the TSA officers said that measures won’t solve the problem and the agency needs to hire 6,000 additional full-time security officers to fully staff the regular security lines.
Over the past several days, many travelers have complained they missed their flights in Chicago. Even they showed up two hours earlier before their flight’s scheduled departure time and followed all the TSA recommendations; they had to wait up to three hour for security.
At 6 a.m. last Tuesday, messages were sent out by Chicago Department of Aviation the agency’s Twitter accounts for O’Hare and Midway advised passengers about unusually long line for security check and recommended arriving two hour early for domestic flights and three hours for international flights.
Since February, 4,000 travelers have missed their flights at O’Hare due to the long lines for security, said officials from American Airlines.
In an official announcement, the Transportation Security Administartion noted its first priority is security and the national transportation system remains a “high value” target for terrorists.