How Much Would You Pay

I'm flying back from LA after some meetings.  Down on Tuesday, back to Toronto on Wednesday.  The 10 or 11 flights a month are all made possible by Air Canada's North American Air Pass which is basically all you can fly for 6 months on Air Canada's North American routes.  Deal of the century, at least for me.  So, I'm back up here at 37,000ft.

After being on this road warrior path for so long,  you begin to just start asking the obvious. How much would I (you) pay to make this grind simpler.  Let's leave aside the private jet stuff, yes, it's obvious but not for the masses of business travelers. 

If you don't travel a lot, skip the rest of this post.

First, would you pay for a simple, dedicated security line?  Not the line cut to get into the security scrum rather the whole metal detector, shoes off, thing. One line only available to people who paid to be in that line. Same as the others, just reserved.

Next, customs/border crossing.  I have the CanPass and soon a NEXUS card. Basically, you bypass the customs folks, get a retinal scan on a machine and you are heading out of the airport. You can be the last guy off the plane and almost beat the first guy via customs when you go to the machine.  $85 bucks for that card.  For the last year I've tried to guess how much time I save by judging lines, etc, and I'm convinced I'm saving at least 20 minutes per segment when I don't talk to the friendly border kids. Worth 10x the cost to me.

Finally, this whole shoes off, laptops out, liquids in whatever, etc.  How much would you pay to keep shoes on and all your stuff in the bag.

Make a corridor with what amounts to a 360 degree MRI/CAT Scan, add whatever bomb sniffing, air sampling, odor checking, etc, equipment you need to allow me (you) to walk, non-stop to my gate.  The whole notion of automatically checking laptops, etc: the technology exists to 'see it' so let's add that. 

So, in my fantasy, we have created a special lane that allows you to walk from the airport entrance to your gate without stopping or talking to a human unless you have bad stuff on you.

Totally voluntary. Totally.  You have to sign up, give details, give up (probably) some privacy and pay for it.  But for that value, you print your boarding pass (or just swipe the credit card you used to pay for it) and walk to the plane.

If you assume that it cost a million dollars a lane up front and $500,000 a year to man it, you need about $3.5mm dollars for a five year operation.  Take the top 40 business airport pairings (LAX/JFK,ORD/BOS, etc) and we are closing in around 150 million (rounding way up) for 5 years.  Start with $1 from a 150 million people and work your way to $150 from a million people or even $1500 from less.  5 year membership. 

Would you pay? Would businesses pay?

Consider that customers at Universal Studios in Orlando can buy a line cut card.  Basically, for a chunk of cash, you can go to the special line and get on rides faster.  At Disney (and Universal) you can buy a VIP package which gets you an escort/tour guide who takes you in the side doors of the rides. Platinum line cuts, as I call it.   You can pay a special price and go inside the circle to touch the Stonehenge rocks.  And so it goes with countless other examples.

Technology can help and people will pay to make the airport grind easier which gets more time back to the flying business folks.

Anyway, back to sleep. See you at baggage claim.

Comments

[dan mcweeney]

Your first question about paying for faster security is already in motion ( at least in the US ). It's called Clear it's 99.95USD / yr but, exists at only these airports ( http://www.flyclear.com/airports.html ). I haven't used it yet as it doesn't cover all the NYC airports. If it did I might seriously consider it although Bruce Schneier blasts them a bit on his blog ( http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/01/clear_registere.html ).

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[just-me]

Probably an even better deal for terrorists. How much would they pay to be able to mix with the well-heeled? I bet they would figure that no TSA employee is going to risk job and pension to antagonize someone who could make his life miserable. Of course a terrorist is going to bet that being able to blend with that crowd is going to make his/her job easier.

How about rather than make flying so miserable, 'security' personnel actually focus on random checks and spot interviews that are so much more successful, than demanding that everyone take off their shoes and show (possible) fake id?