Passenger Wait Times Increase at HRL

Apr. 11—HARLINGEN — The huge increase in seats available to airline passengers at Valley International Airport is, perhaps predictably, creating new issues at the facility.

Southwest Airlines kicked up its flights per day from four to seven, while Frontier has added direct routes to Orlando and Las Vegas, and Mexican carrier Viva Aerobus is now in the market, too.

All in all, the sleepy days of arriving 30 minutes before your flight takes off from VIA are over. Passengers in line to go through the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint are at times numbering as many as 300, and some of them aren't making it on their plane.

Officials at VIA say, to be safe, passengers need to arrive between 75 and 90 minutes before their flight is scheduled to depart.

"We've had several backups at the checkpoint but the TSA has done a pretty good job in ensuring that passengers get through in a reasonable amount of time, meaning 25 minutes, I think, was the longest wait time," said Marv Esterly, director of aviation at the airport.

"But with that said, if you're thinking about coming to the airport 30 minutes before your flight, and you hit that peak bank, you're probably going to miss your flight," he added. "An hour before your flight is still very tight depending on when you get in that line, and whether you're checking a bag."

The wait times at Valley International are longer than passengers have experienced in the past due to more flights and more flights overlapping at peak times, usually but not always in mid to late morning.

Southwest Airlines last month increased their daily flights to and from Harlingen from four a day to seven per day, and intend to make it eight per day in June.

American Airlines has been flying bigger planes into Harlingen, adding more seats to the market. Other airlines are expanding their numbers of flights and adding new routes.

Bring that all together, and it means seats in the market have increased somewhere between 80 percent and 85 percent.

"American recently upgraded to the ( Embraer) 175s and added those to the schedule for larger aircraft," said Bryan Wren, assistant director of aviation at VIA. "And of course we added additional routes with Orlando and Vegas with Frontier, and recently Sun Country announced Cancun service."

VIA closed out last fiscal year with 323,000 enplanements, and with the new surge in seats in the market, airport officials are envisioning the possibility of as many as 400,000 enplanements this year.

"I suspect we will be over 400,000," Esterly said.

He expects official totals for March will be more than 40,000 enplanements, which hasn't happened since 2008, before the recession.

"There's no doubt that with the extra capacity and the extra flights, they're bound to overlap at times, and when they overlap you can have a Southwest plane with 143 passengers and a Sun Country flight going out, or a Viva Aerobus or American or a combination of all three with United, and you can have 300-plus people going through the checkpoint in a short period of time, and that will cause a backup," he said.

TSA officials recently added three more agents to help with passenger flow, and interestingly enough, those additional personnel are above the TSA's staffing ceiling for an airport the size of VIA.

The airport also reconfigured the TSA checkpoint area in an attempt to use the space more efficiently and speed the process along.

"We now have a new ticket process, or TSA authentication equipment there, that now when you get to the checkpoint all you have to do is have is your driver's license out," Esterly said. "You don't have to have your boarding pass or anything else, just show your driver's license and they'll actually put it in the machine and it'll automatically say, 'Hey you've got a ticket to get through.' It speeds it up."

Esterly said another way to quicken the process is to register for TSA PreCheck, at least if you fly more than a couple of times a year.

So far, the longest wait time for transiting the TSA checkpoint has been 25 minutes.

"And 25 minutes is not a long time, well, it is when you're standing in line, no doubt, but it's not unreasonable," Esterly said.

"At small airports, they don't expect that," he added. "A lot of times in the past, especially over the last couple of years, it's been no-wait. You could probably get here 30 minutes before your flight, and if you don't have luggage or anything else, you can get right through and go upstairs. You got used to that. But times are changing."

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