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No More TSA Screening at 150 Airports?
Ryan Boyd August 07, 2018
According to a report by CNN, the Transportation Security Administration might be planning to pull its agents from 150 airports, claiming they aren’t prime targets for terrorists.
Internal documents from the TSA affirm that agents would only be pulled from airports that serve planes with 60 seats or fewer. The move would save $115 million, but some security experts say that the savings are not worth the potential threats.
The TSA has not released the full list of 150 airports under consideration and officials say that no change will take place without risk assessment.
To read more on this story, go to WSOCTV.
[Photo: Getty Images]
On the one hand, a small airport with a handful of Q400s and Embrear 145s flying 45 minute hops to a hub airport don't have to worry about terrorists taking over a plane and commiting a significant act of terrorism. The problem is that terrorists could then connect to a flight bound for Europe or Asia. Remember that some of the terrorists flying out of Boston on 9/11 started their travel at Portland, Maine and connected at Logan. Personally, I think a security service, such as Pinkerton's, working with the TSA, could devise faster and more effective security screening.
TSA does not make me feel safer at airports. Someone who is determined to do something bad will somehow figure out how to do it. I agree with this very smart move.
Small planes can't do a lot of damage. More importantly, putting in decent cockpit doors and heightened passenger awareness post 9/11 - it isn't clear to me at all that airport screenings are a net economic or social benefit. Every traveler going through an airport is spending multiple hours every trip due to the screening process. The productivity lost is enormous even disregarding the TSA budget - which is $7.6 BILLION. Statista says there were 822 million passengers in the US in 2016. If we assume 2 hours per passenger spend wasted in various security getups, this equals 1.6 billion hours wasted, or the equivalent of 822,000 full time (2000 hour/year) jobs spent standing in line. Even if the job equivalent is at $50K - this is $41 trillion of wasted time. Using 1 hour and $25K jobs, the wastage is still over $10 trillion. The mission of the terrorist is the cause panic, fear and subsequent waste way out of proportion to the effort expended. Mission accomplished.
Rex(Regional Express) is Australias largest regional airline & fly to many "one horse towns" route map is here http://rex.com.au/FlightInfo/Network.aspx They only fly Saab 340s(34 seats) & have just over 50 of them. They fly to some very small airports & if security was required the costs would be enormous per passenger (sometimes 1 flight a day, but Australia has very high rates of pay & there would be a minimum of 4 hours work required, So 4 hours x 4 people would probably cost AUD$50/hour x 4 x 4 = AUD$800 (around USD$592). Assuming average load factor of 50% that adds USD$35 to every passenger airfare, which would not be viable. When they fly into big ports like BNE, SYD, MEL, ADL or PER all their passengers go thru security. When they fly to an airport where they are the only airline, security is not required.
By my calculations, that means there's just ~290 more airports the TSA needs to leave. This is a great start! Their own tests show their screeners fail 90+% of the time. I feel much LESS safe with the TSA in place than I do the pre-9/11 security guards who were friendly and efficient. Perhaps the employees are salvageable, but with the current rules, they're forced to act like Don Quixote chasing windmills.