When should TSA PreCheck be offered at no cost to travelers?

Sheldon H. Jacobson (), Arash Khatibi and Ge Yu
Additional contact information
Sheldon H. Jacobson: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Arash Khatibi: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ge Yu: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Journal of Transportation Security, 2017, vol. 10, issue 1, No 2, 23-29

Abstract: Abstract TSA PreCheck is the primary vehicle used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to promulgate its risk-based security strategy. To enroll in PreCheck requires travelers to pay a fee of $85 (or more, through programs like Global Entry or Nexus), which may provide an obstacle for some travelers. The TSA has promoted TSA PreCheck since it makes the air system more secure, provides faster security screening throughput for all travelers, and reduces TSA screening costs (both in manpower and equipment). This third point has led critics of the program to suggest that PreCheck should be offered at no cost to travelers. This paper explores this suggestion and suggests that for certain high volume travelers, offering them TSA PreCheck at no cost is economically attractive to the TSA. The additional benefits of a more secure air system and faster security screening throughput makes the no-cost option a viable strategy for ramping up the number of high volume travelers enrolled in TSA PreCheck.

Keywords: Aviation security; prescreening; precheck (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12198-016-0176-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jtrsec:v:10:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s12198-016-0176-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/12198

DOI: 10.1007/s12198-016-0176-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Transportation Security is currently edited by Andrew Thomas

More articles in Journal of Transportation Security from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().