Letters To the Editor
Trust at Least Some of Us
To the Editor:
I found Arnie Barnett's "The Last Word" ("Trust No One at the Airport," OR/MS Today, February 2003; www.lionhrtpub.com/orms/orms-2-03/frlastword.html) rather surprising and in sharp contrast to his usual wise counsel. It ignores all issues of operational efficiency by insisting that all airline passengers be treated equally and subjected indiscriminately to the variety of indignities and inefficiencies associated with current security procedures.
The massive screenings that go on today are intended to: 1) deter a potential terrorist from trying to get access to an aircraft, 2) detect a terrorist's implements for hijacking an aircraft or exploding a bomb in flight, 3) assure the flying public that the government is doing all it can to protect it against terrorists, and 4) protect the profoundly risk-averse government officials from criticism if all the above measures are somehow penetrated by a sufficiently committed terrorist.
But the costs of security are considerable: government expenditures, time delay and harassment of passengers. And as all readers of OR/MS Today well know, costs are never irrelevant. Recent security procedures have increased the mean delay, and particularly the variance; in light of the high cost of missing a flight and also having a non-refundable ticket scrapped, people now arrive at the airport much earlier. If people value their time at, say, half their income, and if the mean income of air travelers is, say, $60,000, then getting to the airport a half-hour earlier represents a time value of the nation's 600 million trips of $9 billion. Can't we find better ways to enhance security?
This still doesn't address the issue of the cost of the screeners. The gross budget for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the current fiscal year is $5.3 billion, most of which is dedicated to the airport screening process. I have been told, for example, that the number of more expensive screeners employed at the Pittsburgh International Airport has increased by a factor of six since 9/11.
In light of all these costs, Barnett's complacency that the current system is working fine seems rather misplaced. He would agree that we are searching for a small number of needles in an enormous haystack. Wouldn't it make better sense to find ways to reduce the size of the haystack in order to devote more scrutiny to the people of greater risk? Tom Ridge a year ago called for ways to sort out people who are of no risk or low risk. That approach must appeal to an OR/MS audience.
One obvious way to make this partition is to identify a population that is willing to be screened to get a prior security clearance, and have them go through an airport security check not much different from what was done prior to 9/11. This doesn't permit them to go through unchecked, but that check could avoid many of the factors of delay and uncertainty since introduced. Then closer attention could be paid to the others.
I am leading a student project that is designing such a trusted-traveler system known as SWIFT (Short-Wait Integrated Flight Travel). The students have estimated that about 40 percent of the passengers on a random day (disproportionately composed of high-frequency travelers) would be willing to pay $50 to obtain a clearance, submit to a biometric check as they entered the airport, and go through the more traditional magnetometer/x-ray check. I doubt that Barnett would be denied a clearance — more likely, he might refuse to subject himself to the required security clearance, but that's his call, and so his colleagues' suspicion would be his to explain away. I'm confident he could handle that explanation with his usual aplomb, but why should he deny the convenience of a simpler search to all of the rest of us?
Alfred Blumstein
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Alfred Blumstein is a University Professor and the J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research and former Dean (from 1986 to 1993) at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management of Carnegie Mellon University. He has been president of ORSA, TIMS and INFORMS, and is a member of NAE and a Fellow of INFORMS.
Barnett's response:
Al Blumstein's comments are, as always, intelligent. But I offered reasons to fear that a trusted-traveler program could suffer a "false negative" problem, which means terrorists could be guaranteed in advance that their airport screening would be cursory. Moreover, typical waiting times at security checkpoints have fallen well below 10 minutes, especially for frequent travelers who have separate lines. A frequent traveler who allows an extra half-hour because of passenger screening should seek a better scheduling algorithm.
Arnold Barnett
Cambridge, Mass.
Brilliant Proposal
To the Editor:
I think Gene Woolsey's proposal ("Forum," OR/MS Today, February 2003; www.lionhrtpub.com/orms/orms-2-03/frforum.html) that INFORMS position itself as "process improvement" is brilliant, and, like many other brilliant ideas, obvious once you think of it. Some academic members of the profession won't like it; they may have some difficulty what "normative" impact their research has. But that's exactly the distinction; if research is merely descriptive, then it's part of some other discipline.
The only drawback with Woolsey's proposal is that the field of "process improvement" may be crowded already, so that it will be difficult for INFORMS to "own" that brand.
Richard O. Lightburn
Deerfield, Ill.
Richard Lightburn is a former president of the INFORMS College on Marketing.
OR/MS Today copyright © 2003 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.
Lionheart Publishing, Inc.
506 Roswell Rd., Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060 USA
Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969
E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com
URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com
Web Site © Copyright 2003 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.