TSA to randomly survey 25,000 air travelers each year

TSA is planning to ask about 1,000 random travelers at each of 25 U.S. airports to complete a customer satisfaction survey each year that will ask questions about screening equipment, procedures and personnel; wait times; stress levels; and separation from their belongings and companions.

TSA has conducted similar surveys in the past, but has recently asked the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to approve 53 new questions it wants to pose to travelers, on top of the 28 questions that OMB had earlier approved. Any specific traveler – chosen at random on weekdays or weekends; at morning, mid-day or evening; at any screening location at an airport; and at varying periods of congestion – will be asked to answer 10 to 15 questions.

“Passengers are invited, though not required, to complete and return the survey via pre-paid postage, which is prefixed to the survey, or passengers may submit their responses via an online portal,” says a TSA notice published in the Federal Register on March 11.

TSA says it will use an “intercept methodology” to hand paper forms to passengers “immediately following the passenger’s experience with the TSA’s checkpoint screening functions.”

The public can comment of this ongoing customer satisfaction survey by sending an e-mail to TSAPRA@dhs.gov by May 10.

Further information is available from Joanna Johnson at 571-227-3651.