NORTH CHARLESTON – The projected return of up to 80 percent of normal passenger levels at South Carolina’s largest airports by mid-summer will lead to a new problem at security checkpoints.
“This will create a gap issue in our queue areas,” said David McMahon, director of federal security for the Transportation Security Administration in SC
It won’t be as much of an issue in Charleston, where the TSA checkpoint has a large number of runways, but McMahon believes that this will present a problem of social detachment at some other airports in the state with fewer runways and different checkpoint configurations.
“We are going to equip all the tracks to spread people out, so they don’t cause bottlenecks and create problems in the queuing area,” he said.
To prepare for the expected increase in travelers this summer, McMahon recently hired six new policemen in Charleston and is looking to hire others at other airports in the state.
TSA employs about 375 people in South Carolina. Charleston is home to 125 of them. Usually, two or three TSA control bands are open in Charleston, but more could be used on the busiest weekends. When all six runways at Charleston Airport are open, 36 employees will work on each of the two shifts.
Backing up the queue was not a problem in January and it probably won’t be a cause for concern until the weather gets warmer, more people are vaccinated and travelers feel safe again.
Last month, passenger levels remained depressed at 60 percent from the previous year, when airport officials expected another record year after registering a 7.5-degree jump in passenger levels in the normally slow January.
This high projection evaporated with the onset of the coronavirus last March, and 2021 is also unlikely to break any records.
Last month, just over 121,000 ticket holders passed through the terminal. That’s a drop from more than 304,000 arrivals and departures in January 2020. Still, a 60 percent drop is better than the 96 percent drop last April, at the height of the government-ordered economic blockade.
February’s figures are unlikely to see much improvement, either, but airport officials believe the warmer spring weather and continued vaccine administration as they become available will slowly lead to an increase in passenger numbers.
To help increase the number of people who are vaccinated and, in turn, the number of potential passengers, volunteer staff at Charleston International have helped the Medical University of South Carolina administer 3,320 vaccines on three different days since the beginning of the new year. at the airport, which also serves as a test site on a new $ 90 million parking deck that is almost unused.
“The faster we get people healthy, the faster we get them back on the planes and the faster we get back to normal,” said airport CEO Elliott Summey.
Airport council chairwoman Helen Hill, also head of the regional tourism agency Explore Charleston, said that some people may not feel comfortable going to a doctor’s office or inside a building to get a vaccine, and injections into the arm are medicine.
“Being able to stay in the car and get the vaccine is another thing,” she said.
Catch up Warren L. Wise at 843-937-5524. Follow him on Twitter @warrenlancewise.