Would you feel safe booking a business trip through San Francisco International Airport? What about taking your family to Disney World through Orlando Sanford International Airport? If you feel comfortable making travel plans through either of these airports, then you have already demonstrated you are comfortable with privatizing airport security. Both SFO and SFB are among the more than 20 airports in the United States that already use private security through something called the Transportation Security Administration‘s Screening Partnership Program.
When Congress hurriedly created the TSA weeks after 9/11, it did not do a detailed analysis of the costs or benefits of federalizing airport security. At the time, there were just over 16,000 private airport security employees nationwide. The TSA immediately hired over 40,000 airport security screeners, and that workforce has grown to 55,000 today at an annual cost of $12 billion.
If the TSA delivered better security than private airport screeners, there could be a debate about the costs and benefits of all the staff and hours spent in line at TSA checkpoints. But the data we do have show that private screeners do as good a job or better than TSA employees.
In 2005, a Government Accountability Office study found that domestic private screeners performed significantly better than their TSA counterparts. That same year, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general issued a report finding that “the ability of TSA screeners to stop prohibited items from being carried through the sterile areas of the airports fared no better than the performance of screeners prior to September 11, 2001.”
