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IPFS News Link • Transportation: Air Travel

Airlines Spend Millions in Bid to Cut Lines in Record Summer

• http://www.bloomberg.com, Mary Schlangenstein

"We are concerned for this weekend, where we'll see higher than normal flight loads," said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for American Airlines Group Inc. "That will just continue into June and pretty much all the way to September."

American, Delta and United airlines will spend as much as $4 million each for extra workers at their busiest airports to help manage lines and shuffle bins at checkpoints -- freeing up Transportation Security Administration officers to focus on screening. Carriers and airports also are diverting some of their own employees to take the load off TSA staff.

The efforts follow waits of as much as three hours in security lines starting last month that caused thousands of travelers to miss flights and led to hearings in Congress this week on the agency's woes. Summer air travel is forecast to climb 4 percent this year to a record 231.1 million passengers, according to the Airlines for America trade group.