Oakland International Airport in California has the most hated TSA checkpoint in America according to a new study. Charlotte’s Douglas International Airport is not far behind in second place.
Travelmath conducted research between January and April that followed the tweets of travelers and their experiences regarding the TSA.
“This study reveals that the complaints that are often heard while waiting in security lines at airports are also reverberating through social media from coast to coast,” says Cash Lambert, a spokesman for Travelmath.
The study called, “TSA Sentiment According to Twitter” used an algorithm to sort through thousands of geotagged tweets that mentioned the TSA or used hashtags relating to security at America’s airports. These geotags allowed Travelmath to pinpoint the exact terminal in many airports that had positive and negative tweets. Here are a few of the tweets used in the research.
#TSA in Louisville by far the quickest and friendliest in the world @TSA whatever they are doing they are doing it right.
— Davis Webb (@DavisJWebb) March 24, 2015
@TSA I watch as one person slowly id's people and two tsa agents stand 10 feet away. Stop being so inefficient and illlgical.
— Anthony Spinella (@holdplz) April 14, 2015
The study analyzed 34 major airports because many others did not have enough tweets that could be used and were excluded as a result. The study also ranked the sentiment of the tweet as positive, neutral, or negative.
Only one airport in the country, Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California, received a majority of positive tweets about travelers passing through its security checkpoint.
Here are the top five and bottom five airports in America based off tweets conveying feelings about the TSA.
Lambert said, “We found it interesting that while only Burbank had positive sentiment towards the TSA, 4 out of the 5 airports with the most negative sentiment towards the TSA are also located in California.”
The full ranking list of the airports can be found below.
The Travelmath study found that people are far more vocal about their negative TSA experiences than their positive ones. So the data is heavily skewed toward the negative side. Despite this skew, the TSA has room for improvement.
The study concludes, “high levels of security and a positive customer experience are not mutually exclusive, but it may be up to the TSA to optimize a blend of these two factors.”