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U.S. to pay fliers $1.5 million for pilfered items
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration plans next week to say it will pay more than $1.5 million to about 15,000 airline passengers who claimed items in their checked baggage were stolen or damaged in the last 18 months, the New York Times said on Friday.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, when airport security was tightened, checked baggage has been handled by airline employees and federal inspectors. The latter often conduct their work in secluded, windowless rooms at airports.
The extra layer of security, the newspaper said, has left some aggrieved fliers in a no-man's land where neither the government nor the airlines will compensate them for lost or damaged items ranging from cameras to laptop computers to prescription drugs to silk underwear.
Mark Hatfield, a spokesman for the security agency, told the newspaper: "Passengers have been caught in the middle long enough, and the TSA decided it's time to settle," despite long and so far fruitless negotiations with airlines on a long-term pact governing claims processing and the sharing of costs.
Agency officials said the TSA had finished processing 18,000 of a total of 26,000 claims. Hatfield said the government would pay the entire claim in 38 percent of the cases it has reviewed, half the claim in 33 percent, less than half the claim in 12 percent, and none of the claim in 17 percent. The average payment will be about $110, he said. |
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