06-24-2003, 04:58 PM
Hi,
These were people that got to the airport as much as three hours prior to their flight.
SeaTac is an origination airport for a lot of flights. So, early mornings are very crowded. Monday mornings even more so. The interviews I heard with the airport authorities and the fed boss basically said that the fed cannot afford to put enough people on the monitors to handle peak loads, just to handle average loads. The time to clear one person has gone from 8 seconds to 32 seconds. The airport has doubled the number of security stations, but the fed is only manning about half of them. Apparently, among other problems is that the fed cannot (or has not, it was a bit unclear) hire part time employees and doesn't want to have their people working split shifts.
So, if it takes a hundred people to work the peak and they only need fifty to work the average, the fed's solutions are either to inconvenience (not as in "slow down", but as in "You missed your flight? Tough sh*t. You can always try again tomorrow.") everyone in that peak load or to have fifty people sitting around scratching their ass all the rest of the day.
--Pete
These were people that got to the airport as much as three hours prior to their flight.
SeaTac is an origination airport for a lot of flights. So, early mornings are very crowded. Monday mornings even more so. The interviews I heard with the airport authorities and the fed boss basically said that the fed cannot afford to put enough people on the monitors to handle peak loads, just to handle average loads. The time to clear one person has gone from 8 seconds to 32 seconds. The airport has doubled the number of security stations, but the fed is only manning about half of them. Apparently, among other problems is that the fed cannot (or has not, it was a bit unclear) hire part time employees and doesn't want to have their people working split shifts.
So, if it takes a hundred people to work the peak and they only need fifty to work the average, the fed's solutions are either to inconvenience (not as in "slow down", but as in "You missed your flight? Tough sh*t. You can always try again tomorrow.") everyone in that peak load or to have fifty people sitting around scratching their ass all the rest of the day.
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?