TSA

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has taken too long to establish security rules for overseas airplane repair stations, the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA) said Tuesday.

The Alexandria, Va.-based ARSA said the hold up, which it attributed to "bureaucratic foot-dragging," was resulting in delays in the ability of American airplane maintenance company to establish footholds into "expanding overseas markets."

"ARSA members are paying the price for bureaucratic foot-dragging and a poorly thought-out policy,” ARSA Vice President of Legislative Affairs Daniel Fisher said in a statement.

The company failed to meet a congressionally-mandated deadline to produce less-revealing body scanners.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is ending its contract with a company that manufactured controversial full-body scanners — complete with revealing images of passengers — used for airport security.

The machines manufactured by the company, Rapiscan, were meant to X-ray passengers as they passed through airport security checkpoints without capturing explicit images of the passenger's bodies. The agency said Friday that it was ending the agreement because Rapiscan could not produce generic-image scanners quickly enough to meet a congressionally-mandated June 2013 deadline.

TSA said it will meet Congress's deadline, however.

“TSA has strict requirements that all vendors must meet for security effectiveness and efficiency," the agency said in statement. "Due to its inability to deploy non-imaging Automated Target Recognition (ATR) software by the Congressionally-mandated June 2013 deadline, TSA has terminated part of its contract with Rapiscan."

Napolitano, whose tenure has focused heavily on border security, will be at Obama's side as the administration pushes immigration reform.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

"Harry Potter" actress Emma Watson was mistaken for an unaccompanied minor by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner was leaking fuel at Boston's Logan International Airport.
 
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) is proposing eliminating his state's gas tax.

Cars damaged during Hurricane Sandy are being stored at a New York regional airport.

The conservative media personality's confrontation with the CNN host followed a dust-up with security agents at a Texas airport.  

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said Monday that it has fired one of its employees for stealing money from luggage checked by a passenger.

The employee in question stole $36 from a passenger's bag at Charlotte, N.C.'s Douglas International Airport, the agency said in a blog post on its website.

TSA's blogger Bob Burns said the agency decided to fire the employee despite the fact that the theft was of a "small amount" of money.

"Regardless of how little, no amount of theft by a TSA employee is tolerable," Burns wrote in a short post about the incident. "The agency moved immediately to terminate this individual."

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Conservative radio host Alex Jones is accusing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of detaining him at a Texas airport in retaliation for his frequent criticisms of the agency.

Jones's website InfoWars.com is reporting that the talk show host was detained by TSA agents at Austin, Texas's Austin-Bergstrom International Airport after he refused to remove his shoes at a security checkpoint.

TSA requires all passengers except seniors and children to remove their shoes, but Jones contended that other passengers were being allowed to keep on their footwear.
 
Jones's website argued that talk show host was purposely targeted by the TSA employees. 

"As soon as he approached security, Jones was addressed by a TSA screener who said, 'hello Mr. Jones,' indicating that she knew who he was, and immediately ordered him to remove his shoes," the website said.  "When Jones refused, citing the fact that innumerable other people had not removed their shows, the TSA screener claimed that only under 12′s and over 75′s were not mandated to remove footwear under TSA policy. 

Your morning transportation speed-read:

Analysts are debating whether Avis's acquisition of ZipCar is good or bad for fans of the car-sharing service.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) defended his state's transit authority's handling of rail-car storage as he lambasted lawmakers for delaying approval of a relief package for Hurricane Sandy damage.  

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says it found 1,500 guns during its checks of airline passengers in 2012.

A US Airways airplane was clipped by a Spirit Airlines plane at Florida's Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International airport. 

The prep work comes against a backdrop of past holiday attempts to terrorize airplanes