WASHINGTON – Since 2009, a lack of resources in the Transportation Security Administration has prevented the agency from conducting comprehensive perimeter-security studies at the nation's smaller airports, a watchdog report said Tuesday.
TSA conducted “joint vulnerability assessments” with the FBI on perimeter security at 81 of 437 commercial airports during that period, or nearly 19%, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Those reviews covered all 28 of the largest hub airports, which combine to handle more than half of all airline passengers, every three years. Large hubs include airports in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. The security reviews also covered more than half – 33 of 57 – of the medium hubs, while neglecting most smaller airports. Medium hubs include Houston Hobby and Kansas City, while smaller airports had less than 380,000 board planes in 2014, such as Charleston, S.C., or Des Moines, Iowa.
“By assessing vulnerability of airports system-wide, TSA could better ensure that it has comprehensively assessed risks to commercial airports’ perimeter and access control security,” said the 85-page report from Jennifer Grover, GAO’s director for homeland security.
TSA said it lacked resources to comprehensively review all airports with FBI. The reviews require a month of preparation, a week for two to five staffers to conduct the visit and then two months to write the report.
But TSA agreed with GAO’s six recommendations, including developing a system for all airports to better gauge their vulnerabilities.
“TSA also continues to identify ways to partner and collaborate with industry in performing vulnerability assessments and mitigating risks to transportation security,” Jim Crumpacker, the Department of Homeland Security’s liaison to GAO, said in a formal reply to the report.
While TSA focuses on screening passengers and luggage, airport perimeters are a security concern as it becomes tougher to get weapons aboard planes. Suicide bombers killed 16 people at the Brussels airport in March. In 2014, a 15-year-old boy stowed away aboard a plane at San Jose’s airport in April and a baggage handler at the Atlanta airport allegedly smuggled guns to New York in December.
The Associated Press released a report this month detailing hundreds of airport perimeter incidents, or about one every 10 days where somebody hopped a fence or slipped through a gate. But TSA officials denied that some of the cases were security breaches.
Tightening perimeter security is expensive because each airport has miles of fencing, and strategies that work at one might not work for another because of unique airport designs, GAO found.
One unnamed large airport spent $40 million to add security cameras, active-shooter alarms and card readers to identify workers, the report said.
But screening every worker every day at one airport would cost $35 million the first year and $10 million annually, the airport told GAO. One airport spent $3 million to update worker credentials, and another spent $1 million for biometric technology at gates.
For its report, GAO visited airports in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chattanooga, and California’s Merced, Monterey and San Jose. GAO also called security directors at airports in Boston, Charleston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Miami and New York’s John F. Kennedy.
