Airport Improvement
Ronnie Wendt
06 July 2026
At first glance, Punta Gorda Airport (PGD) in Florida and San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in California are very different.
The former is a fast-growing regional airport shaped by leisure travel and fluctuating flight schedules that served about 2.3 million passengers last year. The latter is a long-standing global gateway; a Category X airport that moved 54.5 million passengers through its complex, interconnected terminal system last year.
Yet both rely on the same model for passenger and baggage screening: TSA’s Screening Partnership Program (SPP), which allows airports to use private contractors operating under federal oversight to manage security checkpoints...
