How To Decide If We Want Airport Security

On Sunday July 7, a record number of people passed through TSA airport checkpoints. As a result, more than three million people experienced at least one of the eight tasks required by TSA regulations. They could have had a document check or a body pat-down. Then, the pat-down had 18 prescribed steps.

While we might say that wait times were one cost paid by July 7th’s 3,013,413 travelers, government regulators calculated our cost somewhat differently.

TSA Regulations

Our story starts in 1972. After airlines experienced once-a-month (or so) hijacking during the previous 10 years, screening began. Not similar to current security, then, unobtrusive and almost invisible, security was privately provided and paid for by the airlines. But then, after 9/11 (2001), the government took over. Creating the TSA (Transportation Security Administration), they revolutionized air travel. After 9/11, just one man found with a bomb in his shoe resulted in all of us having to proceed barefoot through security.

But the biggest change was airport design. Before 9/11, we could arrive 30 minutes before flight time and dash to the gate with a friend. Our suitcase could have been filled with large tubes of toothpaste,

No more. Instead, a security cordon greets us.

As a result, we have to arrive at the airport hours before flight time. With economists defining cost as sacrifice, early arrival became a cost of flying.

Our Bottom Line: Safety Regulation

Instead of time, though, most safety legislation quantifies the value of a life. Called the “value of a statistical life,” a dollar amount lets regulators decide if a government mandate is too expensive.

During the mid-1970s, we had a 55-mile-an-hour speed limit that saved lives but got us to work later. Using an amount like $885,000 (in today’s dollars), they could figure out the value of the lives they saved. Similarly, when furniture flammability standards valued a life at $1 million, their cost benefit studies compared estimated lives saved to the expense of implementing the regulation. Now, knowing that a life could be valued at $7.4 million by the EPA and $9.6 million according to the FAA, government agencies select their regulations.

Similarly, regulators decided against using car seats on planes for babies when they compared the number of lives that would be saved to the amount that would be spent for the car seats and fares if lap babies were not permitted. Much cheaper, seat belt mandates cost $138. At $90,000 per life saved, a railway crossing gate is cheap enough too. Some say anything that costs less than $10 million per life saved is okay. But still, at more than $15 million (per statistical life saved), we support TSA screening.

My sources and more: The Verge is a good starting point for the cost of the TSA. From there, the NY Times focused on regulatory costs that NPR described after 9/11.