Originally Posted by
tkey75
The question is, how could they NOT be in love with the TSA? Zero cost to them and they hold zero accountability for airline security. It's win-win.
I've mentioned before that two factors are at play here:
- Cost savings of having a TSA: not having to pay for security plus not having to reimburse passengers for theft.
- Costs of having a TSA: loss of customers who won't fly (or won't fly as much) because of the TSA.
Put simply, which is greater? My guess would be the latter.
I heard one figure a while ago that pre-9/11 security cost about $1B per year total, about 1/8 the cost with the TSA. So DL had to pay, say, a few hundred million a year for pre-TSA security--but how much is being lost due to TSA-avoiding non-flyers?
I'm not a business beancounter, but I could imagine airlines using logic that the TSA is directly observable saved money: no paying for security, and no reimbursing passengers when your own employees steal from checked bags--and as an added bonus, since you get to blame the TSA for theft, you can turn a blind eye to your own employees' theft, saving yourself the fire/search/interview/hire/train costs associated with firing someone.
On the flipside, it might be quite difficult for an airline's beancounters to pinpoint how much revenue they're losing out on from TSA avoiders--and in any case, it could be blamed not on the TSA, but on my favorite phrase: "concerns about 9/11 and terrorism". Heck, they might even believe that restoring airport security to 9/10 could lose even more passengers due to AFSers not flying because "that's the kind of security that let 9/11 happen!"
Of course, if the TSA implemented 100% mandatory shock bracelets and caused air travel to plummet 90%, airlines would need only to go to Congress, explain how Essential to America(TM) aviation is, and they'd be feeding at the public trough to fly empty airplanes around.