NATA Calls for Uniform for Employee Screening

In a letter to Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Kip Hawley, the National Air Transportation Association and the Airline Services Council (ASC) called on the Transportation Security Administration to develop a uniform policy for screening airport employees. The groups cited the difficulties airport employees have in gaining proper identification and clearance for access to secure areas. They called the current policies “endless bureaucracy filled with unnecessary redundancy.”
“Currently, no standardized process exists for the screening and approval of airport employees,” NATA President Jim Coyne said. “Each airport authority is permitted to design and implement its own procedures for approving employees, with no required coordination between airports. As you are well aware, many airline service providers service commercial airline aircraft at a large number of airports across the country. The lack of standardization between airports for issuing secure credentials continues to increase the administrative costs for these service providers to hire and train new employees. These costs come in a variety of forms, from the direct costs in submitting information for Criminal History Records Checks to the indirect costs incurred in lost productivity while these employees wait an excessive amount of time for clearance. These rising costs will be further exacerbated as the TSA implements much-needed screening improvements to strengthen the security of airport operating areas. Furthermore, there is no process in place that allows employees approved at one airport to access secure areas at another airport. In many cases, senior management of airline service providers are required to encounter a burdensome process when visiting individual facilities at an airport, which wastes time and money for both the service provider and the airport.”
He said there is unanimous agreement amongst service providers that increased security is necessary but added, “it is imperative that the TSA implement a comprehensive, national policy governing the screening and credentialing of airport employees to complement these initiatives. A streamlined process for screening and badging airport employees will benefit all stakeholders in the aviation industry, and will ultimately get us closer to our goal of a seamless airport security operation.”