<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by yonatan:
Interesting article.
I am currently a student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and am in a course on privatization analysis. On the first day of class we discussed the TSA takeover of airport security.
After all the back and forth, the professor noted that on September 11th, airport security in the U.S. was already not a very profitable business. Apparently even with all the corner-cutting by Argenbright & Co. (hiring people with criminal backgrounds, high turnover, etc.), these companies were barely making a profit on security operations.
With the additional standards imposed post-9/11 (I agree some of them are silly, but some, like real background checks, do make sense), would most private security firms be able to make a profit?
Yonatan</font>
I guess it probably depends on how big the Security Co is and how many "contracts" it has. It will be subsidized by the TSA (taxpayer) but I say yes they will make a profit. As long as they're not having everyone remove their shoes and other ridiculous "in the name of safety" policies. As long as they don't evacuate an entire airport because a sparkler was found in the "sterile" area. As long as they don't attempt to search all 6,800 airplanes in the USA because a few boxcutters, some play dough, bleach and a note indicating the finder should contact authorities were found.
If they perform "real" security and not this farce the TSA call security the fleecing will stop and they may eventually profit.