> There is an official way for travelers to bypass long TSA waits if they’re willing to spend: hiring concierge services to escort them through security.
> Perq Soleil is an airport arrival and departure assistance service that can help travelers through TSA in about a minute flat by accessing alternative lines usually reserved for airport staff and airline personnel. The company — which operates in more than 300 airports and 150 countries — charges a base rate that varies by location.
Talk about burying the lede. Apparently the airports “highly discourage” line-sitters, but if you use services that pre-bribed airports you can skip the lines entirely.
Why should private plane passengers be subject to TSA? TSA (paid for by you and me by the way, not for free) exists to protect the public from harm, on public flights by common carriers. It used to be contracted by airlines themselves. Unless you are the most extreme of pro-seatbelt law people, it would make little sense for TSA to screen anyone on a private plane manifest unless the client asked them to.
No, the TSA exists because 19 people hijacked 4 flights and succeeded in crashing 3 of them into various important buildings in the US on 9/11/2001.
Private planes are just as capable of crashing into buildings as commercial jets. The TSA has picked up some ancillary public safety functions over the years, but their raison d'etre is to prevent hijackings.
No, the TSA exists because politicians felt they needed to be seen doing something after 9/11. If there were actually much political will for it to fulfill actual security purposes, it surely would’ve been reformed after it’s continually abysmal performance on security audits.
>if it was a jobs program, it would be way better staffed..
You're saying it's not comparable to the size of the New Deal, the biggest jobs program ever in the US.
That doesn't disqualify it from consideration as a jobs program as there are many jobs programs much smaller.
Adding 60k to ~3 million is significant because it's permanent. These are low skilled workers (and security theater as you astutely say) mostly concentrated in large cities.
Whereas the New Deal was temp jobs that disappeared once grants and funding disappeared.
In terms of menace potential, any private plane will lose to a van full of fertilizer and a baddie intent on causing destruction. It's a matter of scale.
Little planes, like this one [1] just don't do damage on the same scale as airliners.
No argument though, just saying it's a hard problem, and the scaling issue makes it somewhat awkward to deploy security resources in proportion to the threat.
I don't have a solution. I'm not exactly thrilled with the current setup, but I try to stay quiet since I can't think of anything better.
Government building codes already anticipate the "van full of fertilizer" attack, as a result of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Federal building security is a separate matter though, with its own agency called FPS that predates DHS and TSA by decades.
Lots of things can crash into buildings. Should they all be screened by TSA? Drones and their operators prior to every launch? 30 minute helicopter tours and high-rise HVAC drop offs? Private satellites?
Or is licensing and registration (of pilots and aircraft and manifest and flight plan) enough?
Governments are reactive. So if any of these other things ever successfully destroy a building then you can absolutely count on new rules and laws that, at a minimum, will include screening.
So it’s complete building destruction that is the protective mission here? Not loss of life or general terrorism or something else? I’m glad we are clarifying
I wasn’t aware that DJI drone with 60lb payload was subject to more regulations than a Citation leaving TEB but I guess I’m open to learning what those are.
I don’t even understand why this is an issue, because TSA screening is funded through user fees. There’s a line item of $5.60 per one-way ticket for exactly this that’s separate from airfare and other fees. (https://www.tsa.gov/for-industry/security-fees)
If this is so, why does Congress have to fund the program? Why not pass the funds through directly to the agency?
It seems that SFO's policy of having an intermediate company that buffers salaries is working well because I flew through there to Taipei after this whole situation and there was no wait.
Edit: Newspapers have a long history of using headline editors who add “spin” otherwise reasonable stories handed in by journalists. This story was built by talking to a few entrepreneurs who offer line-sitting to see if they’d served any customers for airport security waits. Only one had.
The TSA experience is a big reason why some international travelers actively avoid US layovers. I've talked to people who book longer routes through Europe or Asia just to skip US airport security theater.
It's interesting that the market solution is hiring line-sitters rather than, say, pressure on TSA to improve throughput. Says a lot about how normalized the dysfunction has become.
I flew out of SeaTac yesterday (March 28th), and the TSA there were pretty well staffed. Took me around 6 minutes, and that was only because the person in front of me was talking to the agent about the tote bag they got from Trader Joe's.
I wonder why Trump just doesn't sell this himself, like golden tickets that you can buy from ICE where they just push back the free-tier line enjoyers to insert the patriotic gold level travelers.
In Turkey people with connections to the government get strobe lights permit to skip the traffic through the emergency line. There's so many opportunities both for monetization and loyalty rewarding.
Due to lapses like that sometimes I question my theory that all those people(Erdogan, Trump, Putin etc) are in the same group chat.
I know it's bad, but yeah, I just hate waiting, it's stupid. So whenever I can I just go through "first class" security and nothing bad happens, just skipping the queue. Look decent, look busy, keep on walking and bam you're past the security in a minute compared to tens of minutes or hours. And don't ever remove that "short connection" or "priority" tag from your luggage, it indeed goes out first. Airports are so freaking annoying way to commute, take a bus/train/tram/taxi/car to the airport, figure out the maze, wait in queue, get bored after security (because you arrived to early not knowing how much you're going to wait in security), go to a gate, then a different gate, queue again, get inside, and wait again. Why did we do this to ourselves!?
140 comments
> There is an official way for travelers to bypass long TSA waits if they’re willing to spend: hiring concierge services to escort them through security.
> Perq Soleil is an airport arrival and departure assistance service that can help travelers through TSA in about a minute flat by accessing alternative lines usually reserved for airport staff and airline personnel. The company — which operates in more than 300 airports and 150 countries — charges a base rate that varies by location.
Talk about burying the lede. Apparently the airports “highly discourage” line-sitters, but if you use services that pre-bribed airports you can skip the lines entirely.
Imagine the pandemonium that would ensue if Taylor Swift were to enter an airport terminal through the normal entrance.
Private planes are just as capable of crashing into buildings as commercial jets. The TSA has picked up some ancillary public safety functions over the years, but their raison d'etre is to prevent hijackings.
Federal civilian workforce (ex Postal Service and Military) is only 3 million.
TSA has 60k employees.
That's a lot of permanent jobs.
TSA was created to accomplish a goal - security theater (mostly), preventing another 9/11 (maybe more in theory than in practice), etc.
The New Deal WPA, according to wikipedia, supplied about 3M jobs at its peak in 1938, when the population was ~130M.
2.3% of the population vs 0.017%.
Also empirically - if it was a jobs program, it would be way better staffed..
You're saying it's not comparable to the size of the New Deal, the biggest jobs program ever in the US.
That doesn't disqualify it from consideration as a jobs program as there are many jobs programs much smaller.
Adding 60k to ~3 million is significant because it's permanent. These are low skilled workers (and security theater as you astutely say) mostly concentrated in large cities.
Whereas the New Deal was temp jobs that disappeared once grants and funding disappeared.
Little planes, like this one [1] just don't do damage on the same scale as airliners.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack
(But regardless, it’s not clear that the TSA is even performing that kind of calculus.)
No argument though, just saying it's a hard problem, and the scaling issue makes it somewhat awkward to deploy security resources in proportion to the threat.
I don't have a solution. I'm not exactly thrilled with the current setup, but I try to stay quiet since I can't think of anything better.
Or is licensing and registration (of pilots and aircraft and manifest and flight plan) enough?
I wasn’t aware that DJI drone with 60lb payload was subject to more regulations than a Citation leaving TEB but I guess I’m open to learning what those are.
Private planes can do the same thing.
Edited to clarify NOT TSA
If this is so, why does Congress have to fund the program? Why not pass the funds through directly to the agency?
Edit: Newspapers have a long history of using headline editors who add “spin” otherwise reasonable stories handed in by journalists. This story was built by talking to a few entrepreneurs who offer line-sitting to see if they’d served any customers for airport security waits. Only one had.
It's interesting that the market solution is hiring line-sitters rather than, say, pressure on TSA to improve throughput. Says a lot about how normalized the dysfunction has become.
In Turkey people with connections to the government get strobe lights permit to skip the traffic through the emergency line. There's so many opportunities both for monetization and loyalty rewarding.
Due to lapses like that sometimes I question my theory that all those people(Erdogan, Trump, Putin etc) are in the same group chat.