Downsizing Airline Security

By Viveca Novak

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the federal agency in charge of keeping the nation's skies safe, spent much of the past year vetting, hiring and training 54,000 passenger and baggage screeners. But because of severe budget problems, that force is about to start shrinking. TSA chief Admiral James Loy told Congress recently that 3,000 airport-screener positions would be cut by June 1. But sources tell TIME that a TSA task force has been working since mid-March on even more drastic spending-cut options; a source estimates that the agency could be as much as $1 billion over its 2003 budget of $5.15 billion. One possibility: unpaid furloughs of more than a week this year for all TSA employees. The TSA hopes to release a plan this week describing how the screener cuts will be made. Loy wants to get the number down to 48,000 by October 2004; small airports are likely targets. "They just got this thing going, and now they're slashing it," grumbles a source at the pilots' union. Admits TSA spokesman Robert Johnson: "We have a lot of work to do on this to make the reductions in a way that doesn't impact on security." --By Viveca Novak