Originally Posted by RichardKenner

I must say that I can't believe every such "claim" that somebody makes and this particular one seems to be less credible than most. I've done computer research that heavily involves queuing and, although it was my research partner who was the queuing theory expert, I've learned enough to know that what determines queue length isn't what seems at first glance to do so. Yes, the difference between the arrival rate and the departure rate (the latter here being the rate at which passengers are being screened), but if that's too small, then queue length goes up at a very rapid rate. For most situations, the queue length is determined by the patten of arrivals over time. And that's very hard to manipulate even if you want to. Yes, you can decrease screening throughput, but it's hard to precisely regulate that in a way that will produce queues that are merely long, not unmanagable.

So I don't find this story particularly credible. (E.g., perhaps some medium-level person said something such as this to a low-level person, but I have problems believing that this was actual policy.)