Prevent the Next TSA Crisis. Privatize Airport Screening

While Congress continues to battle over homeland security legislation, Transportation Security Administration workers are finally getting paid through an executive order. That’s a relief, but the collateral damage of the partial shutdown cannot be undone. Hundreds of airport screeners quit, and travelers waited in hours-long security lines. George Bush Intercontinental Airport had some of the worst TSA lines in the nation, with some travelers waiting up to four hours.

All of this started because Republicans and Democrats disagreed over immigration enforcement changes in a government funding package. President Donald Trump kept insisting that Congress first pass an unrelated bill for more election regulations. It makes no sense for all of this unrelated political squabbling to ruin so many Americans’ travel plans.

There is a better strategy that Congress can enact: Privatize security screening at the nation’s airports. That means contracting out screening operations to expert security firms and shrinking the government’s role to regulatory oversight and intelligence.

Privatization may sound radical, but that security structure is standard in European and Canadian airports.

In Canada, the federal aviation authority provides contracts to security firms for five years, and whether they are renewed is based on performance. Under their system, 95 percent of travelers are screened within 15 minutes. In Europe, about four-fifths of commercial airports use private screening, including those in Britain, France, Germany and Spain.

In the United States, the TSA took over screening at 430 commercial airports over the past two and a half decades since 9/11. It hasn’t been a glorious run. TSA has misallocated resources, delivered mediocre (at best) security evaluations and wasted vast amounts of traveler time in queues. And it has long scored near the bottom of all federal agencies in annual rankings of best places to work.

Thankfully, the 2001 bill creating the TSA allowed for some private airport screening in the Screening Partnership Program (SPP). As part of SPP, San Francisco International and 19 smaller airports have been using private screening firms for years, and with good results.

How safe is private airport screening? Over the first decade of the TSA, numerous federal investigations found that the security performance of SFO and other SPP airports was at least as good, and sometimes better than, TSA-run airports.

And the TSA results? In recent years, there has been little public information on screening performance, although some data has leaked. In 2015, an undercover test to slip banned items through TSA screening found a shocking 95 percent failure rate, and in 2017 another undercover test found a TSA screening failure rate of roughly 80 percent. Results of more recent tests have been apparently suppressed by the TSA.

This secrecy is another reason why a privatized approach would be superior. TSA has a conflict of interest because it both performs screening and sets standards — and judges its own performance. By contrast, in the Canadian and European systems, the government authority sets the standards and can objectively judge the performance of private screeners at the various airports.

Also, as a near monopoly, TSA has little incentive to improve efficiency or to innovate. But under a privatized system, companies would compete on their records to win contracts at airports, and they could draw on their broad international experience to continuously improve their operations.

While the D.C. budget fight causes a mess in airports across the country, SFO and other private-screening airports are running normally with screeners being paid by their employers. And perhaps more cities would have opted for private screening but for the government’s bureaucratic hurdles. Airports must gain approval from the TSA for SPP, but of course the agency has an incentive to deny requests to retain its near monopoly. And TSA’s labor unions lobby against expanding the SPP program.

The needs of air travelers should come first, and yet they are increasingly sidelined by dysfunction in Washington.

Once Congress fully settles this budget battle episode, our lawmakers should liberalize the SPP process and encourage more cities to go private. Indeed, lawmakers could explore options to decentralize all screening to the nation’s airports. The airports could competitively bid screening to expert firms based on performance.

The budget battles in D.C. will only get uglier as federal debt soars higher and interest costs displace other spending. The risk is not just more shutdowns but that the budget squeeze will cause shortfalls in hiring and investment in airport security screening. 

Allowing this dysfunction to sabotage vacations and business trips makes no sense when there is a proven alternative. Government gridlock shouldn’t ground America’s travelers.