Booker: Hour-Long Wait Times At Newark Airport 'Profoundly Unacceptable'
NEWARK, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- A New Jersey senator is asking the federal government for help with reducing long wait lines at Newark International Airport.
Senator Cory Booker has voiced his concerns to the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration about what he sees as TSA under-staffing at the airport, WCBS 880's Rich Lamb reported.
"When you get such a volume of people complaining about these long, long lines and actually missing their flights even though they arrived more than an hour before -- that is profoundly unacceptable," Booker said.
Booker says time is money.
"So for me the wait time should come down considerably," Booker said. "It shouldn't be an hour, it shouldn't be 45 minutes -- I think even a half an hour is too long."
While Booker acknowledges the importance of ensuring harmful materials or people don't get through security checkpoints, he believes having more staffing will allow the quality of work to remain thorough while also cutting back on wait times.
Nationally, the number of TSA screeners is down 15 percent since 2011.
