The Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
will return to at least two small airports that it had previously declined to
serve.
The moves come as both houses of Congress have approved measures that
would require the TSA to restore screening service to any airport that lost
commercial air service since 2013 but has a guarantee from an airline to resume
service within a year.
This
week, the TSA informed the airport in Del Rio, Texas, that it will once again
provide service there, airport manager Juan Onofre said. TSA will also reenter
the Klamath Falls airport in Oregon, according to the office of Rep. Greg Walden,
who represents Klamath Falls in Washington, D.C. The agency didn’t tell the
concerned parties when it would recommence operations at the facilities.
Klamath
Falls and Del Rio are among at least six U.S. communities that had lost
commercial air service since 2013, then been denied TSA service when their
airports secured deals with new commercial carriers. The other communities
are Sheridan, Wyo.; Port Angeles, Wash.; Salina, Kan.; and Moab, Utah.
U.S.
regional airports have lost commercial service at an accelerated rate in recent
years due to a pilot shortage at regional airlines as well as a move by the
major U.S. carriers to phase out propeller planes and the smallest regional
jets.
In
denying service to airports in Klamath Falls, Del Rio and Sheridan, the TSA
told officials that the funds required to fulfill their requests for federal
security weren’t justified in light of their passenger loads and the
unpredictability of air service in the regions.
The TSA
confirmed in an email Friday that it has made a decision “to federalize select
airports.” The agency wouldn’t say which airports, or how many.
The
moves in Del Rio and Klamath Falls came one week after the House passed a
stand-alone bill that would assure renewed service to those airports. The
Senate incorporated the same measure into the much larger FAA reauthorization
bill that it passed last week. For the TSA measure to become law, both houses
must ultimately pass it with the same mechanism, either as a stand-alone bill
or a part of a final FAA reauthorization bill.
Despite
what appears to be this week’s preemptive steps by the TSA, Walden spokesman Andrew
Malcolm said the measure’s sponsors would press forward with the legislation.
“The
TSA has decided to do this but we still want to enshrine it into law,” Malcolm
said.