TSA to Test Streamlined Security Procedures
Relief may be in sight for the dreaded travel ritual of making your way through airport security. The 
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) told Congress last week that it is readying a trial program for later this year that would allow select airline passengers to skate through the dreaded security checkpoint obstacle course with VIP-like ease. It's only a trial that will be run in a few airports -- which ones are not yet known -- and it will only include a small subset of travelers. But the idea is to market test whether there's a feasible way for TSA to safely speed up the slow process, and ratchet down the indignation that has come to define the experience of getting through the security checkpoint. Just last week, a brouhaha erupted after a 95-year old woman was required to remove her adult diaper during a TSA pat down.
A Better Experience at a Cost?
To be eligible for the streamlined process, travelers would first have to agree to a full background check conducted by the TSA. According to the Washington Post, that could include "credit information, tax returns, and other personal data to verify that members pose little or no risk." If that's not a problem for you, how might having to fork over $150 a year for the service hit you?
To be clear, the TSA has not yet laid out any potential consumer expense for this program. But just yesterday, the U.S. Travel Association, a trade group that represents all aspects of the travel industry, released a survey that says 45 percent of Americans overall would pay as much as $150 a year, per person, for a "trusted traveler" service the association has been pounding Washington to enact to reduce check-in delays and hassles. Among frequent leisure travelers, 61 percent say they would pay the fee, and 75 percent of frequent business travelers said they were game.
This comes on the heels of JetBlue announcing its new Even More Speed program that will sell expedited security checkpoint service as an upgrade for travel in 15 of the airports it flies out of. The initial plan is for customers who buy extra legroom (it can be as little as $10 per flight for short hauls, though I just priced it out for a NYC-SFO roundtrip and it added $130 to my ticket cost) to also get a "free" upgrade that allows them to pass through the security line reserved for first class/business class passengers. But down the line, JetBlue intends to offer Even More Speed as its own a la carte upgrade, price TBD.
Seriously? The solution to the problem is to have us pay our way out of it? At potentially $150 a year for the "trusted traveler" program? I appreciate that the TSA has to do the background check, and there is a cost associated with that. But the fact that the Travel Association asked how we felt about paying $150 per year seems a bit much.
And why exactly is the consumer expected to bear the brunt of this? In research commissioned late last year by the same group, a sizable chunk of consumers said that they would consider taking two or three more trips by air each year if the hassle factor eased. If those extra trips materialized, that would generate an estimated extra $84.6 billion in revenue, according to the trade association. Yet we're supposed to take on all the cost of streamlined security so we get a less hassled experience, while the industry gets to make more money. And this is even when the association's own research shows that the cost of air travel is already the biggest reason we don't take to the skies more often:,
The hassle of the security maze was a distant third to the price of the airfare. Given that fact, would adding as much as $150 per person annually to the cost of air travel really fly with consumers, despite what they said in that survey?
Photo courtesy Flickr user oddharmonic
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