SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Travelers are facing the longest wait times in TSA history because of the ongoing partial shutdown of the U.S. government. Wait times at some airports have exceeded four hours, and employees at those airports are calling out of work at rates of 40-, 50%. President Trump today signed a memo to pay TSA officers, but it is unclear exactly where the money would come from. And even if paychecks resume, it's going to take time for the system to recover.
We're joined now by somebody who is living in the middle of all of this. Ricky Smith is the general manager of the world's busiest airport, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson. Thanks so much for talking to us.
RICKY SMITH: It's good to be here. Good to talk with you.
DETROW: Take me through your morning on weeks like this. What are you doing to mitigate all of the lines and the logistical nightmares that we're talking about and seeing?
SMITH: Well, these are extraordinary times, and we're spending more time with line management than normal. And so a typical evening leading into a morning like this morning is to, one, make sure that we have all the volunteers that we need. These are employees of the Department of Aviation who are not responsible for wayfinding, customer experience. Just making sure we have enough of those employees out in the concourse to help our customer experience team and our Atlanta Police Department team and our Delta team, for example...
DETROW: Yeah.
SMITH: ...With wayfinding. And so just making sure we have all the resources we need to try and ease the passengers' experience here as much as possible.
DETROW: What's been the most useful change or adaptation that your team has made to get through this this week?
SMITH: So, you know, one part of the confusion that we experienced was, you know, passengers just not knowing where a line begins because there's so many lines, what the path of a line was, what the purpose of a line was. For example, whether - is that line for precheck? Is that line for general? And so we developed these signs so people can more easily see the beginning of a line, the end of a line. They can actually see if they're getting closer to the checkpoint. And so we think that's been well-received. It's certainly added to the order that we were already experiencing, but it's provided more clarity to passengers in terms of what lines they should be in and where those lines are taking them.
DETROW: Yesterday, a report from Atlanta's WSB radio talked to a TSA agent who expressed frustration about the presence of ICE. She's called it, quote, "a smack in the face." I'm wondering how much frustration like that you're seeing from your staff. Is that a real factor for you?
SMITH: No. I haven't seen any frustration from my team, but remember, my team is not responsible for security checkpoint management. That's a TSA responsibility, and, you know, ICE was brought on as an extension of TSA to help them primarily with crowd management. We haven't had crowd management issues here at the airport. As a matter of fact, if you talk to most passengers that have been here over the last couple weeks, I think they've appreciated all the effort that has gone into trying to make a difficult situation...
DETROW: Yeah.
SMITH: ...The best for them, including, you know, the attitude and the moods of TSA employees.
DETROW: What is the main thing you're hearing from passengers?
SMITH: That this shouldn't happen. I mean, they are very appreciative of those TSA workers that are continuing to show up. They really are. And many of them are looking for ways to kind of show that gratitude or to provide some support to the TSA workers. And they've also been very tolerant. I mean, I - you know, one of the, I guess, things that I will remember, you know, for a long time is just how cooperative and understanding the passengers have been throughout this whole process because they have every right to be more annoyed than they've been.
DETROW: This has been the second major extended partial or full government shutdown to affect airports within the last 12 months. I'm curious what you learned from your point of view last time around, especially when it comes to ramping back up to full speed once funding is resumed, that you're thinking about at this point in time.
SMITH: Well, again, the issue is checkpoint capacity, and the factor there that could make that or break it is the level of TSA workers that come to work. During the previous shutdown, it was a full government shutdown. And so TSA employees did not necessarily feel isolated or underappreciated relative to other federal government employees. This time, that was a factor, right? They - this seems like TSA employees are the ones who are carrying the brunt of this shutdown. And so what that taught us was that we have to find - we had to find new ways to show them that we appreciate what they're doing. And we've done that through, you know, providing them food vouchers in our concessionaire community. Food and retail operators have offered discounted or free...
DETROW: Yeah.
SMITH: ...Free meals. And there are a host of other individuals or organizations in the community just trying to find ways to show the TSA employees that we appreciate them. And I think that's a lesson learned from the last shutdown.
DETROW: Ricky Smith, general manager of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. Thanks so much for talking to us.
SMITH: Thank you. Much appreciate it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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