Fewer Tri-Citians are flying but TSA keeps finding guns in Pasco carry-on bags

The number of guns the Transportation Security Administration found in carry-on luggage at the Tri-Cities Airport last year was twice the rate of the national average.

But because of the nearly 57% drop in airplane passengers, that amounted to just four guns.

The year before, TSA seized 10 guns at the Pasco airport’s security checkpoints. That was about 1 gun per 100,000 passengers compared to this year’s 2 per 100,000.

The nationwide trend was the same.

The TSA said in a news release that the rate of guns per 100,000 in carry-on bags found at checkpoints across the country was the highest since the department was established in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.

Last year, one gun per 100,000 passengers — or 3,257 — was seized compared to one per 200,000 passengers the year before. That year, TSA seized 4,423 firearms.

Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport had the most guns found in carry-ons, followed by Dallas-Forth Worth.

The only way to legally transport firearms on a commercial airline is to place unloaded guns in a locked, hard-sided case with checked luggage.

Penalties for having a gun in a carry-on bag vary and depend on if they are loaded.

Drop in passengers

Meanwhile, the sheer loss of passengers in Tri-Cities because of the COVID-19 pandemic last year hit hard coming off a record number of travelers in 2019.

Boardings fell from just over 438,000 in 2019 to just 189,000 passengers.

The total number of travelers in and out of the airport was only 377,971 — a drop from 870,890, the Tri-Cities Airport director Buck Taft told the Tri-City Herald.

Even at the beginning of last year, the airport bucked the trend of typical slow months, he said.

2020 started out strong. There was a jump of 1,400 more passengers in January last year. February was even busier with an increase of 1,649 passengers than was typical for that month.

Then the pandemic hit, and he said that the industry does not expect to fully recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2023 or 2024.

“Most people depend on the business traveler,” Taft said. “Until international flights open back up we won’t reach 100 percent.”

Taft said that the airport made significant budget cuts to make up for the losses, and is hoping to be at 55 percent of flights this year in order to financially break even. With the loss of passengers, the loss of revenue follows.

While revenue comes from various sources including federal grants, Taft said a large percentage of funding comes from user fees on things like parking and a percentage of sales that car rental companies.

Passengers also pay a passenger facility charge on each flight ticket, but the airport does not automatically receive that money back from the airline unless a project is planned and approved.

And the Port of Pasco’s capital budget for the airport was dropped from $2.3 million to $300,000 this fiscal year.

But Taft said there are large Federal Aviation Administration projects planned in the next few years that the airport is required to complete, including adding a taxiway and shifting a runway.

“We are making sure we have the money do to (those projects),” Taft said. “We are just trying to be as good of stewards with the money we have.”

Projects now on hold include buying equipment, tearing down and replacing some buildings, as well as adding fencing on the northern edge of their airport’s property, as well as doing more landscaping — things Taft said that make operations go smoothly but can be pushed to later dates.

He said that the airport will re-evaluate the projects in July — after the spring break peak and the early summer travel times pass — to see if they are seeing more travelers boarding planes.

This story was originally published February 5, 2021 at 12:56 PM.