CHELSEA, Mass. (AP) - Logan International Airport needs to hire 125 security screeners to staff the rebuilt Terminal A, which reopens in two weeks.
The Transportation Security Administration has about a 25 percent turnover rate per year, but George Naccara, head of agency operations in Boston, is confident he will be able to fill all the jobs because of the agency's training office and recruiting center in Chelsea.
"It's a challenging job because we are asking these people to do two things at the same time: provide a high level of security and a high level of customer service," Naccara said.
The first class is already moving through the training center, listening to lectures and learning practical skills such as how to move the hand-held magnetometer over a passenger's body while explaining its purpose.
The TSA was created by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to replace poorly trained private security screeners. Two flights hijacked that day originated in Boston.
But the agency has been beset by a high turnover rate because of low salaries that start at $23,500 annually combined with the high cost of living in the Boston area.
Congress has also capped the number of screeners nationwide at 45,000, even as passenger traffic on U.S. airlines has bounced back from 9/11 to 474 million last year. It is expected to grow further in the near future.
The $475 million rebuilt Terminal A at Logan is the first terminal at a major American airport to be designed and built for the post-9/11 era. It has wider checkpoint waiting areas and a baggage screening area with networked computers that can be operated by fewer screeners.
There are about 800 screeners at Logan who have to check about 12 million passengers per year as well as screen about 15 million pieces of luggage. They find about 11,000 banned items per years, from guns and knives, to cologne bottles shaped like sticks of dynamite, to cigarette lighters made to resemble hand guns.
Logan was one of the first airports in the country to have a screener training center and the first to have a recruitment center.
Applicants to the Logan center are placed at 31 airports in New England and upstate New York.
After filling out an online application, prospective screeners are brought to the recruiting center for interviews, finger printing, and a simple physical exam.
They then enter a two-week training course, which includes about 80 hours of classroom instruction and 100 hours of on-the-job training, both above the TSA mandated levels of 40 classroom hours and 60 hours on the job.
Following training, recruits are certified as screeners and baggage inspectors, meaning they are free to make decisions without the approval of supervisors.
They still mist take three hours of recurrent training per week and pass an annual rectification.
