TSA lines are so out of control that travelers are hiring line-sitters

From the last few paragraphs:

> There is an official way for travelers to bypass long TSA waits if they’re willing to spend: hiring concierge services to escort them through security.

> Perq Soleil is an airport arrival and departure assistance service that can help travelers through TSA in about a minute flat by accessing alternative lines usually reserved for airport staff and airline personnel. The company — which operates in more than 300 airports and 150 countries — charges a base rate that varies by location.

Talk about burying the lede. Apparently the airports “highly discourage” line-sitters, but if you use services that pre-bribed airports you can skip the lines entirely.

I flew out of SeaTac yesterday (March 28th), and the TSA there were pretty well staffed. Took me around 6 minutes, and that was only because the person in front of me was talking to the agent about the tote bag they got from Trader Joe's.

I don’t even understand why this is an issue, because TSA screening is funded through user fees. There’s a line item of $5.60 per one-way ticket for exactly this that’s separate from airfare and other fees. (https://www.tsa.gov/for-industry/security-fees)

If this is so, why does Congress have to fund the program? Why not pass the funds through directly to the agency?

It seems that SFO's policy of having an intermediate company that buffers salaries is working well because I flew through there to Taipei after this whole situation and there was no wait.

Only FOUR people actually used these services?

Edit: Newspapers have a long history of using headline editors who add “spin” otherwise reasonable stories handed in by journalists. This story was built by talking to a few entrepreneurs who offer line-sitting to see if they’d served any customers for airport security waits. Only one had.

https://archive.ph/cwDaq (No account needed)

I know it's bad, but yeah, I just hate waiting, it's stupid. So whenever I can I just go through "first class" security and nothing bad happens, just skipping the queue. Look decent, look busy, keep on walking and bam you're past the security in a minute compared to tens of minutes or hours. And don't ever remove that "short connection" or "priority" tag from your luggage, it indeed goes out first. Airports are so freaking annoying way to commute, take a bus/train/tram/taxi/car to the airport, figure out the maze, wait in queue, get bored after security (because you arrived to early not knowing how much you're going to wait in security), go to a gate, then a different gate, queue again, get inside, and wait again. Why did we do this to ourselves!?

The basic competence of elected officials and they people they appoint matters.

In Indian temples line-sitters are very common. Many queues are 5+ hours long.

I wonder why Trump just doesn't sell this himself, like golden tickets that you can buy from ICE where they just push back the free-tier line enjoyers to insert the patriotic gold level travelers.

In Turkey people with connections to the government get strobe lights permit to skip the traffic through the emergency line. There's so many opportunities both for monetization and loyalty rewarding.

Due to lapses like that sometimes I question my theory that all those people(Erdogan, Trump, Putin etc) are in the same group chat.

I keep hearing about these long lines but I literally went to a major airport the other day for a flight and got through security in minutes.

Capitalism works quite well at solving problems.

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