{"id":347116,"date":"2026-07-21T10:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T10:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/347116\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T10:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T10:36:11","slug":"tampa-international-plans-move-tsa-to-private-contractors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/347116\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa International plans move TSA to private contractors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TAMPA, Fla. \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampaairport.com\/think-tpa?gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=13174480303&amp;gbraid=0AAAAABb8V2U9E8Lx8tFbqefFTveI-p2c4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tampa International Airport<\/a> is planning changes to its security operations.<\/p>\n<p>The airport is among the first in the country to join <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsa.gov\/goldplus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Transportation Security Administration&#8217;s new Gold+ program<\/a>. Beginning next May, security will be taken over by a private contractor with TSA oversight.<\/p>\n<p>The new program is part of the TSA\u2019s public-private partnership program.<\/p>\n<p>Airport officials said the decision will safeguard passengers from future government shutdowns that snarled national air traffic earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>Though impacts were minimal in Tampa, officials said the move is about more than shutdowns.<\/p>\n<p>In a released statement, airport officials said moving to the TSA Gold+ program \u201callows greater flexibility in exploring new screening checkpoint infrastructure and technology to enhance the customer experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For participating airports, private contractors would take over security, manage screeners and checkpoint security equipment.<\/p>\n<p>TSA would provide oversight.<\/p>\n<p>The almost 800 TSA workers in Tampa were notified of the change Monday.<\/p>\n<p>They will be the first in line for jobs with a new private contractor, but right now, there is a lot of uncertainty for them because a private contractor has not been chosen.<\/p>\n<p>Another big challenge with this new program is the amount of time Tampa International has to make the transition.<\/p>\n<p>Airport officials said they hope to launch the program by May, but the federal government has no private security contractors for TPA to pick from.<\/p>\n<p>According to CNN, The Gold+ program expands upon an existing program that has been used by a handful of airports featuring privatized screening by also allowing them to manage the screening technology.<\/p>\n<p>There are 20 airports in the United States\u00a0that have private companies operating the security checkpoints supervised by the TSA under the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsa.gov\/for-industry\/screening-partnerships\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Screening Partnership Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>San Francisco International, Kansas City International, Sarasota-Bradenton, Orlando-Sanford and 17 smaller airports participate.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Gold+ program builds on the TSA&#8217;s long-running Screening Partnership Program (SPP), which has been in place for 25 years. Under the SPP, the TSA continues to oversee airport security while private companies employ security screeners.<\/p>\n<p>The broader effort to expand the use of private airport security has received support from the Trump administration during the president&#8217;s second term.<\/p>\n<p>While no new federal legislation has been approved, there appears to be bipartisan interest in exploring additional public-private partnerships for airport security operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2013 Tampa International Airport is planning changes to its security operations. The airport is among the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[274,558,276,2635,115,277,135,137,136,278],"class_list":["post-347116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-jason-lanning","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}