Have you traveled by plane recently? The TSA suggests you arrive at the airport 2 hours prior to departure to give you adequate time to go through the airport security check line. But if you were to follow the TSA advice in recent weeks you would have missed your flight. It is now taking 2 to 3 hours to get through the security lines. This past week hundreds of passengers at Ohare Airport missed their flights because of security delays, and dozens of flights were delayed while waiting for passengers to process. Nationwide, some 4500 passengers have missed their flights over the past 2 months because of long check lines.
So what's going on? In the past 5 years, airline passengers and flights have markedly increased, and the number of TSA employees has decreased by almost 5 thousand. In addition 1200 to 1500 employees are lost monthly due to attrition. The Reason Foundation has estimated that since 9/11, people are collectively spending 300 million extra hours per year at airports because of screening delays. Reason analysts say this translates to 8 billion dollars a year in hidden costs to the economy.
To date, the TSA has received 70 billion dollars of our tax money, and for what? Seventy thousand passengers have filed complaints against the TSA for stolen or damaged property, and 500 agents have been fired for stealing.
After 9/11, airport security was taken away from the private sector and given to the Feds, who then created the TSA. Its purpose was to provide us with better protection from terrorism than the private sector could provide. And like virtually everything else the government touches, the service has turned into a crap fest. It is incompetent, inefficient and is bleeding the American taxpayers dry.
The next time you are stuck in a 2 hour line at the airport, ask yourself why a government agency is preferable to private sector efficiency.
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