4 ms·

I'd really like to see an analysis of the total number of passenger-minutes that are spent waiting in TSA lines. Divide that by the avg human lifespan and comp

I'd really like to see an analysis of the total number of passenger-minutes that are spent waiting in TSA lines. Divide that by the avg human lifespan and compare it to the number of people killed or injured by a terrorist attack. When looked at like that, TSA costs more total lifetimes than have ever been taken through terrorist attacks.

fgonzag 8y ago
By multiple orders of magnitude proabably. I'm going to go ahead and call 5000 people who have been killed by aviation terrorism events. Assuming they all live to 90 years old, that's 450,000 man years tragically lost. The FAA website stats that 630,000,000 people fly per year. If each of them takes 10 minutes to cross the line, that's 105,000,000 man-years lost per year...
- jcims 8y ago
  You’re mixing man years and man hours. But it’s still over 11,000 man years spent in lines at the airport.
  - fgonzag 8y ago
    Wow, you're absolutely right. Screwed the math hard there. 10 minutes was a very low estimate though, especially in bigger airports like Seattle, SF, NYC.
Scoundreller 8y ago
That 630m figure is for US domestic flights. Otherwise, thanks for doing the math on how much of our lives is killed by security screening.
GordonS 8y ago
Check Bruce Schneier's blog, I seem to recall he did some kind of breakdown like that a few years back.