Management of the area's three major airports is asking the federal Transportation Security Administration to beef up its staff to reduce "dramatically" longer wait-times for passengers being screened for flights.
Wait-times have increased in recent months to the point that passengers are missing connections and some flights are being delayed, wrote Thomas Bosco, director of the Port Authority's Aviation Department in a May 4 letter to TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey operates John F. Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International and LaGuardia airports.
Long screening lines have been a focus of recent NBC 4 New York reports.
From March 15 to April 15, there were 253 instances of wait-times exceeding 20 minutes at TSA screening points at JKF, Bosco noted. There were only 10 such instances during the same time period in 2015, he added.
"The experience at EWR (Newark) and LGA (LaGuardia) has been similarly abysmal, and the patience of the flying public has reached a breaking point," he wrote.
The letter states that the Port Authority is considering applying for the TSA's Screening Partnership Program to help with passenger screening at the area airports.
