Long lines, woes abound at LAX.

In the year since Congress mandated stricter security screenings at the nation's airports, many have taken extensive measures to curtail passengers' waiting times.

Not LAX.

Passenger waits at Los Angeles International Airport remain among the longest in the country--especially during peak travel times, when some other airports have taken measures to ease the bottleneck.

"You talk to people in the industry and they all say, avoid LAX like the plague," said Stuart Klaskin, a principal at KKC Aviation Consulting in Miami. "It's the inconsistency of waiting in a long line one day and a short line the next that really drives people crazy."

Surveys by the online travel service Travelocity.com and the federal Transportation Security Administration place LAX consistently among the worst offenders in the nation. Other airports ranking low on one survey or the other were New York's JFK and LaGuardia facilities, along with Newark and Miami. But L.A., and to a lesser extent Boston, were the only two near the bottom of both lists.

The delays are caused by a number of factors, including poor scheduling by airlines and the high number of federal security screeners who were removed from their jobs six months after background checks. Aggravating the situation is a tendency among airline personnel to accommodate late passengers by bumping them up to the front of the line so they can catch their flights.

According to some travel experts, frequent travelers--many of them on business--appear to be gaming the system by arriving late to avoid the long lines. As a result, leisure travelers who arrive with plenty of time to spare may be pushed back in the lines--essentially being penalized for arriving early.

Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American Airlines, said LAX is among six airports with longer-than-average security waits. Passengers are advised to arrive 90 minutes before flight time for domestic travel, but he acknowledged that the airline intercedes on behalf of late passengers, even though this annoys others.

"We try to help our customers get to their flights on time," Wagner said. "You can understand where other people in the front of the line don't like to get cut in front of--that goes back to grade school."

The TSA has no control over airline personnel who don't want passengers to miss their flights, said Nico Melendez, an agency spokesman.

"If the airlines want to make sure that some of the passengers get to the front of the line ahead of others, then they are technically allowed to do that," he said.

Security stress

Carrie Shay, an executive assistant at Fashion Business Inc., a trade group, gave herself a 2 1/2-hour cushion when she arrived at LAX on Jan. 10 for a Cathay Pacific Airlines flight to Hong Kong.

"The lines were horrendous," said Shay, who almost missed her flight because she waited an hour to get her carry-on bags through the X-ray machines. "When I saw the line, I thought, 'Oh my God, I hope I gave myself enough time.' It was stressful."

Shay is a strong advocate of airport security. She was just 10 blocks away from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and had to free the area on foot. A frequent traveler, she said LAX needs better directions and more personnel to tell passengers which lines to wait in.

A recent study by the TSA found that Miami International Airport and LAX had the longest wait times among the 21 largest airports in the U.S. The study found that wait times ranged from under a minute during non-peak hours to more than an hour during periods of intense activity.

A separate survey released in September found that average wait times at airline ticket counters nationwide were 22 minutes, while security checkpoints typically lasted 14 minutes, according to the Department of Transportation's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the Travelocity survey, taken on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, security waits at LAX averaged 34 minutes--second only to Newark--and the longest waits reached 60 minutes at Terminal 5, where Delta Air Lines is housed.

Dismissed screeners

Contributing to the long wait times is a recent reduction in the number of federal security screeners.

LAX had the largest number of screeners who were fired after the federal agency uncovered incomplete background checks that included lying on applications or criminal histories.

At least 139 screeners at LAX were fired for suitability problems in June 2003. Airline experts believe that budget troubles have forced TSA to make even deeper cuts.

Melendez said that with roughly 2,300 TSA employees, LAX is not short-staffed. The number, including part-time screeners, is down from 2,800 at its peak.

Joshua Marks, associate director at the Aviation Institute at George Washington University, said a modest rise in passengers makes it tougher for the TSA to balance the number of security screeners placed at airports such as LAX. "They still don't have it right, but it's a lot better than it was a year ago," Marks said.

He also pointed out the factors that make it a challenge to speed up the process.

"LAX is an airport with a lot of originating traffic, which means that during peak times a lot of passengers overwhelm the TSA checkpoints," he said. "I don't think there will be specific improvements at LAX until the concourses themselves are rethought to accommodate more checkpoints."

Los Angeles, in particular, was affected by the rerouting of traffic during periods of high alert, said Michael Hall, travel manager at Johnson Controls Inc. in Milwaukee, which manufactures airport security systems.

"The last Orange alert in December and the reduction of screeners means they may have hit a crunch," Hall said. "There were a lot of warnings early on for people to check in early and now maybe travelers are a bit wary that everyone has been crying wolf."

Six Air France flights between Paris and Los Angeles were canceled on Christmas after U.S. officials said that six men on Air France Flight 68 might have been planning to hijack the place and crash it near Los Angeles. French officials said the American's fears were groundless, but the incident resulted in tightened security at the nation's airports and a return of long lines for security check-ins.

Other U.S. airports have successfully implemented measures to alleviate waiting times at checkpoints.

Airline officials at Chicago O'Hare and Baltimore-Washington international airports, for instance, often escort portions of long lines to less crowded checkpoints and escort them back toward their designated terminal gate. Additionally, the number of checkpoint lanes at Midway International Airport in Chicago increased to 13 from eight in the past year.

"At (these airports) the lines are really moving very, very well," said Chris Rhatigan, a TSA spokeswoman.

Airport denials

Los Angeles World Airports, the city department that operates LAX, has not conducted its own study of wait times at LAX.

"I'm not aware of anyone complaining about long wait times," said Nancy Castles, a LAWA spokeswoman. She denied that passengers were waiting more than 15 minutes at most terminals, pointing out that the average wait time of 6.9 minutes found in the TSA survey was acceptable--despite being second-worst after Miami. (Dallas came out best with an average wait time of 1.8 minutes.)

Castles noted that Southwest Airlines' Terminal I often has a long line winding outside the terminal because the space inside is limited. "It could be just a matter of how the airlines schedule their flights," she said.

Yet some passengers boarding planes in January have waited longer than 30 minutes to get through security checkpoints even as late passengers are hustled ahead of them.

Morten Beyer, chairman and chief executive of Morten Beyer & Agnew Inc., a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., said some airlines are more liberal in delaying flights for late passengers.

"I had to run for a flight in Denver after the TSA people took my shoes off and I didn't even have time to put my shoes back on," said Beyer, a frequent traveler. "When I got on board, all of the passengers cheered."

David Greenberg contributed to this story.