Airports also have an incentive to keep the TSA lines as variable as possible. If the line can sometimes take 5 minutes and sometimes take 2 hours, you need to arrive 2 hours early. And then if it actually takes just 5 minutes - that’s 1:55 left for buying food and shopping.
It's not TSA, but I was particularly dumbfounded at Heathrow Airport when security exited straight into an extended shopping corridor of champagne, jewelry, and caviar.
It's not quite the same situation as it used to be, but this stuff used to be ideally suited to the dual purpose of buying gifts to take home and burning all your remaining foreign currency.
The concert analogy is close but not perfect because the problem is that grouping necessarily puts you into premium seats. If they can sell aisle and window seats at a premium, you can't allow people to group for free without putting people in relatively more premium seats for free. The scale of airline seats (on a single flight) and concert tickets is incredibly different anyway, and different forms of price discrim…
Southwest is an example of general admission applied to airline seating. By the time you're calling non-middle seats "premium", we've already lost. We should aim to have markets that provide abundance rather than focusing on extraction through things like price discrimination. It's indefensible that they sell seats which then aren't actually big enough to fit a person, whether it be their legs or their arms - this is…
There's no airline seat that can't "fit a person", that's hyperbole. Fit any person, maybe. Fit without touching the person next to you, maybe. Fit without negotiating who uses the armrest or shared spaces with a stranger, maybe. I fly frequently, I'm 6'2", I'm obese. I fit into a middle seat. Don't love it, it's not the nicest, but it's less cramped than any public transit seat and most theater seats.
It strikes me as remarkable that, in a pandemic which killed several hundred airliners worth of Americans, a lot of fuss was made about mask-related impositions, while TSA-related impositions that save a number of lives that's close to zero have become entirely normal. All War On Terror and no War On Viruses.
> while TSA-related impositions that save a number of lives that's close to zero Are there any good estimates of the total economic costs of this security theatre?
You can make one yourself: How many hijackings of US airlines where there in the 20 years before, and after. The number was higher before, but it was very small.
Locking the airplane cockpit door, along with awareness that hijackers will kill you (as opposed to fly you to a different country and you are free in a couple days if you stay quiet) are also factors. I don't know how to separate them from anything the TSA does, but I have to believe those are both more important.
Travel insurance can be bizarrely difficult, though. My travel delay coverage covers "mechanical" issues but not "operational" ones. Plane broke? Covered (if you can get the airline to admit it). Pilot couldn't be found? Not covered. Why the difference? No one knows!
It would be nice to have more consumer advocacy and information in this area. I have had two travel insurance claims and they were both like butter, I easily recovered my extra costs. I stuck with that company, but now their COVID rider doesn't seem very good, so I went with another for an upcoming strip. Some offer "for any reason" upgrades... yeah, it's complicated and not a very friendly place to buy products or u…
I rarely buy travel insurance but, last time I did, I bought from American Express which seemed more reputable than some of the ones that came up in search results.
The problem is we have a culture that often overly accepts protectionist and defensive systems and is highly averse to any risk what-so-ever. When these sorts of systems are put in place, they become far more difficult to remove than erect, even if they're shown to be ineffective, wasteful, or actually add to risk. You're not going to see many politicians vote against such systems because the second some incident occ…
> protectionist and defensive systems and is highly averse to any risk what-so-ever ... like masks. But seriously, a lot of the same people that objected to the TSA madness also objected to the mask mandates.
> But seriously, a lot of the same people that objected to the TSA madness also objected to the mask mandates.
But this time a lot of people who didn't object to the TSA objected to masks.
Sad thing is that the system constantly says that unsarcastically. Airlines, TSA, and airport messaging constantly remind me to be hours early and to anticipate long security lines.
Real question / Zero trolling: For your travel situaton, is it possible to not fly?
edit: misread your question
I will go out of my way to not fly, since I've found flying (more specifically, the logistics _around_ flying) to be a displeasurable experience, and driving is much easier and affordable.
In the beginning everyone thought COVID is only droplet transmission and in that case regular masks work really well because it prevents someone carrying the virus from spreading dropdlets. It doesn't even have to be very tightly fitting because droplets will get attached to the fabric. Later there were some evidence that it can become aeresol in some high concentration situations like hospitals, but for all practica…
> Later there were some evidence that it can become aeresol in some high concentration situations like hospitals, but for all practical purposes in everyday life its droplet. That's not true. There are good studies, followed up with full contact tracing in the environment it happened in, that show aerosol transmission in everyday situations (such as planes and restaurants) Additionally on the poor fitting masks, trip…
That was later yet. At least in the public mind - some leaders who should know better were saying things that they should have known were false.
Are you suggesting that less than N95 masks do not reduce COVID-19 transmission?
Yes. Surgicals are not meant for protection against airborne contaminants.
While that is true, surgicals do provide some protection. They cut your risk down significantly when worn correctly, though proper N95 (and other similar standards meant for airborne contaminants) will reduce risk a lot more.
It's actually one of the reasons I'm hesitant at being pro-public transit. Last thing I need is a TSA equivalent pat down for entering a bus or metro because the government decided it wants to.
Have you ever travelled to and taken mass transit in Israel? This is common.
No, I don't live in or have visited Israel, but it's obvious why Israel would have such precautions compared to many other parts of the world.
Outside the USA, especially at smaller airports, xraying all the bags is something thats only done to meet the rules. The staff don't care what you have in your bag - if security has a queue, they'll just pick 100 random people and tell them to skip security and go straight through to departures. Likewise, if there is only 2 people on duty to search bags identified that need searching, and they're busy, then any liqu…
xraying all the bags is something thats only done to meet the rules. The staff don't care what you have in your bag I wish this was true. In Spain recently something in my bag tripped the Xray alarm. I had to unpack my bag and take "something metal" out for inspection. It turned out it was an empty food packaging with a shiny foil bit on the side. Over all, it's not so big a deal, but they certainly cared about it.
Spain has had an actual terrorism problem in recent years, so they are likely to have better standards. Other EU countries don't really have that problem and so will have less strict standards. there are different standards for flying into Spain than other countries (or at least there were last time I flew to Spain, but that has been a long time)