The cost is a little higher than that, because many passengers don't fly non-stop--they may take two flights though a hub, for example, but there's only been on

The cost is a little higher than that, because many passengers don't fly non-stop--they may take two flights though a hub, for example, but there's only been one screening. However, if you assume one screening per flight, and a one-way flight cost of $200, that's 5% of the flight's cost. As TSA employees only make $12-15 an hour, I presume that most of that cost goes into paying for expensive screening machines and bomb-detection sensors, but that's pure speculation.