Washington ? Despite all the grumbling about those federal security screeners, airports are not rushing to replace them with private workers.

Only two airports — in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Elko, Nev. — have applied to the government to switch back to privately employed screeners. And the management at Elko is having second thoughts.

Advocates of private screeners had predicted that dozens of airports would jump at the chance to make the switch, saying the bureaucracy inherent in a government agency — the Transportation Security Administration — slowed staffing decisions at the country’s 450 commercial airports. Security lines snaked through some terminals while screeners elsewhere at an airport sat idle.

Elaine Sanchez, spokeswoman for Las Vegas McCarran International Airport, explained why most airports are sticking with the federal screeners: “In a word, liability,” she said.

Sanchez and other airport officials said they are concerned about potential lawsuits: People might sue an airport where private screeners failed to prevent terrorists from launching an attack.

A law passed in 2002 gave limited legal protection to some companies involved in anti-terrorism businesses such as airport screening. Companies that receive a special designation from the Homeland Security Department can be sued, but their customers cannot.

Congress created the TSA after the Sept. 11 attacks and ordered it to replace the privately employed screeners hired by airlines with a better-paid, better-trained federal work force.

William Brooks, of Independence, Mo., right, waits with arms extended during a metal detector examination by Sean Magee, a First Line Transportation security screener, in this April 22, 2004, file photo, at Kansas City International Airport in Kansas City, Mo.

Congress also ordered five commercial airports to use privately employed screeners who are hired, trained, paid and tested to TSA standards to serve as a comparison to the federal employees. Those airports are in San Francisco; Rochester, N.Y.; Tupelo; Jackson, Wyo.; and Kansas City, Mo.