Private screening: airports opt out.

• Author: Segal, Geoffrey F.
• Position: Citings - Brief Article

IN NOVEMBER the Transportation Security Administration began accepting applications from airports to opt out of using federal security services to screen passengers. The new option, dubbed the Screening Partnership Program, began with a five-airport pilot program but is now open to all 450 commercial airports in the U.S.

There is some evidence from the five pilot-program airports--located in San Francisco, Kansas City, Rochester, Jackson Hole, and Tupelo--that private contractors were able to make existing security dollars go further. It's not clear, however, whether greater reliance on contractors will save money in the short term, since it would not alter the formula by which federal dollars are disbursed to airports. Three evaluations found no meaningful differences in security performance between the five test airports and their federally screened counterparts. But there...