Thanksgiving Travel Could Be a Mess, Will the TSA Be Ready?

be any delays. The long way times are inevitable as T s A employers are leaving for other reasons too. Suzanne Rowan Killer, her staff writer at Forbes, joins us for how holiday travel could be a mess. Thanks for joining us, Susanne, Thanks for having me. Let's talk about Thanksgiving travel. It's gonna be very, very busy. It's gonna be one of the busiest, uh moments we've had so far, coming back from the pandemic and all of that, and

there's just a lot of questions up in there. We've already seen a bunch of delays happening with various airlines and whatnot. The next big question people have is will the T s A be You ready have a very looming vaccine deadline coming for the t s A workers. They need to be fully vaccinated by Monday, November, and the t s A hasn't really given us a lot of details on what the compliance numbers have been, so that's one of the huge questions swirling around will they

be ready? So Susanna tell us a little bit more about it. Well, you've got that right. Thanksgiving weekends always a huge travel weekend. It's usually one of the top weekends of the whole year. This year is going to definitely be just right up there. So what happened was that in mid October, the t s A administrator David Pakovsky told Shannon that there was about six percent of the t s A workforce but has been vaccinated, and she axpected that number to go quite a bit higher

in the next few weeks. So since I covered that story, I would check in with the t s A every week and say how are the numbers? Do you have new numbers? And I kept getting, you know, just sort of, we don't have anything new. We don't know anything new. And that happened right up to this week, and then something else happened, which was yesterday there was a panel hearing at the House Homeland Security Committee. It was the

Subcommittee for Transportation and Maritime Security. And one of the people testifying was Everett Kelly, who is the president of the union representing federal workers, so he represents seven thousand federal workers including t s A employees. And he was asked, does he know how many you know, how many people have been vaccinated at the t s A. And he said he didn't know. Everybody seemed to be going with

this sixty percent number, which was the latest. Now I suspect that that number has gone quite a bit higher in the last five weeks, but we just don't know where that lies. Yeah, and you know, the bottom line they said was, you know, the long weight lines are just going to be there, which is not what anybody wants to hear. You know, they're saying that when it comes to the vaccine mandate that they're not going to really see any disruptions there. They think they'll be fine.

But it's not just that they're saying that they're seeing a lot of turnover. People are just quitting because you know, low wages, working conditions, basically what we've been seeing in various other sectors right now throughout the country so either way, they're kind of saying, might not see many disruptions here, but looking maybe towards December and the rest of the holiday season, there could be something happening. I think there's gonna be a long line to Thanksgiving. There's long lines.

Even under the best of circumstances. People need to get to the airport early. I mean, that's just kind of a given. You might look out if you're going in a morning flight that those flights should kind of take off more on time. If you're plying out of a smaller regional airport, you probably have better luck. But people are just going to have to kind of bring their patients with them and assume that they're going to come

upon these long lines. And you're right, they're part of a the union president effort Kelly actually pushed back a bit to some of the numbers of Compress who were saying, well, you know, this vaccine mandate is making this problem, and he was saying, look, there's going to be aligned because of staffing. You know, we have staffing shortages. So it's a combination. It's sort of a perfect storm that's happening. And you're right, all across the country in all different industries,

the airline industries. You mentioned the delays because of weather over the last few months, but that was also because of shortages. So what's happened is that people have in all different industries have left their jobs. Often they took retirement packages or you know, exit packages, and there hasn't

been the staffing to kind of catch up. So we're I just think that people need to kind of go in there with a reality check that it's going to expect it, to be expected to be away, to get to the airport a lot earlier than you were planning on it, and then enjoy your holiday and a little bit more. Back to the vaccine mandate, because a lot of people have sought religious and medical exemptions for all

of that. They're also there's is also this push by some of the unions to maybe push back the deadline to January four, that's the other deadline that they have for federal contractors and whatnot. They're saying, maybe you just push back till after the holidays and uh, you know,

maybe things could be a little bit better. You know, that might be something that was evert Kelly say in the in the panel yesterday, he said that the union wants to push it back to January four, so that both federal workers and federal contractors, who work often side by side, have the same deadline. This vaccine mandate, though was announced in July, people have known about it since July. I'm expecting, actually that the number of employees that the t s A That have been vaccinated is quite a

bit higher, maybe in the eighties now. I think that the Customs of Border Patrols had numbers in the ad around now, and so I've expected to be kind of in that ballpark, maybe even a little bit higher. What looks like the vaccine mandates have worked at the airlines, there are definitely people who looked for the exemptions, but that's the minority. The you know that when the airlines did the vaccine mandate up into the nineties, that jumped, you know, and they were the Delta CEO bastions that

they got stuck at seventy five percent. They were handing up parrots trying to incentivize people like I stuck at seventy five and then they didn't do a mandate in the sense. Delta did not do a mandate in the sense of saying you get vaccinated or you lose your job. But what they said, I think personally kind of amounts to a mandate. They said, well, if you don't get vaccinated, we're going to charge you two hundred dollars every month

extra for your health in shirts. So that's another you know, that was definitely a stick that's gonna push, that's going to push them to adopted that much quicker, you know, definitely at that point exactly, and then jumped up. Their numbers jumped away too. So they've seen this all over travel that when the mandates come in, the numbers definitely go up. And the other thing in mind is that there are a lot of people pushing for vaccine mandates,

not just for the employees but for passengers. As you know, that's part of the international travel when people come into the US now they have to be vaccinated. And there was just a couple of dozen members of Congress that are pushing for that to be drifted over to the US travel. And when you look at surveys h since gosh, five six months now, steady, the American people are behind it. Every survey says two thirds of Americans want vaccine mandates

for passengers. And you know there was a whole yesterday that came out of morning console. Only of Americans still comfortable flying right now. So yeah, it's an ongoing story and I'll put it that way. Yeah, definitely. Well, we'll see what Thanksgiving, how Thanksgiving shake out, and hopefully everybody gets to where they need to go and back in a timely manner. Suzanne Roland kelleher staff writer at Forbes covering travel trends, Thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts