Will extra, private workers expedite the security line at Sea-Tac Airport?

Private workers start training along security lines at Sea-Tac Airport Thursday.

Airports across the country are trying to speed up security lines before the busy summer travel season. People have been complaining about hour-long waits for months, KIRO 7 reports.

Related: Port of Seattle is spending millions to speed up TSA lines at Sea-Tac

Because the airport is expecting a record number of summer passengers this year, a set of 90 temporary private contractors are training at Sea-Tac to help deal with so many people.

The contractors have been busy training all week. On Thursday, they’re focusing on security lines.

The idea is for the contractors to free up TSA employees, so those employees can open up more security lines.

“The lines are pretty crazy. You really have to plan around it,” said a traveler.

The TSA is still asking for people to be patient and is encouraging passengers to sign up for pre-check, a special security line that lets travelers keep their shoes and jackets on to help speed things up.

The contractors officially start work next week and are expected to be at Sea-Tac through September.

KIRO Radio’s John Curley, a frequent traveler, doesn’t believe that the extra workers will make lines move any faster.

“Maybe you have 10 lines coming in, it’s the same as I-5 going underneath the Convention Center,” Curley said. “You’ve got five lanes coming in down to two. You’re going to have five or six lanes of TSA and it will come down to two additional things and go through the body scanning machine.”

Curley’s co-host, Tom Tangney disagrees, saying part of the deal is adding additional body scanners that should expedite the lines, at least some.

Whether the extra bodies work or not, Curley is a fan of the privatized security, as is used in the UK, France and other European countries.

“They are much faster and moves more efficiently,” he said. “They should also do the same thing and privatize the Federal Aviation Administration. Allow those people a quasi-non-profit system; privatization for the entire thing. It’s the only way you create competition and then you’re actually created like a customer and then you’re treated better.”

Curley added that, although there are relatively nice TSA agents in Seattle, that’s not the case in bigger cities around the country.

“In other cities I fly into, you are treated like a piece of human garbage by somebody who is making $28,000 a year to stand there on a rubber mat and yell at you and point you this way or that way,” he said. “You could not speak to a human being that way if you were in a private business because nobody would go to your shop. But when the monopoly is created by the government, you can treat you like a piece of crap.”

Curley cited a study that says TSA ranks 232 out of 240 federal agencies in terms of employee satisfaction.

“Well, yeah,” Tangney responded. “Because the John Curley’s of the world make them feel terrible.”

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