What is the price to put airline passenger’s life at risk? Apparently $100 per person…..

The Wall Street Journal 03/19/12 Scott McCartney

“$100 to Fly Through the Airport”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303863404577281483630937016.html

Hate the full-body scans, pat-downs and slow going at TSA airport security screening checkpoints? For $100, you can now bypass the hassle.

The Transportation Security Administration is rolling out expedited screening at big airports called "Precheck." It has special lanes for background-checked travelers, who can keep their shoes, belt and jacket on, leave laptops and liquids in carry-on bags and walk through a metal detector rather than a full-body scan. The process, now at two airlines and nine airports, is much like how screenings worked before the Sept. 11 attacks.

To qualify, frequent fliers must meet undisclosed TSA criteria and get invited in by the airlines. There is also a backdoor in. Approved travelers who are in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's "Global Entry" program can transfer into Precheck using their Global Entry number.

Global Entry has been extremely popular with frequent international travelers. Approved travelers get to use a kiosk to enter the country rather than waiting in often-long lines to get their passports stamped and go through Customs inspection.

Consider that in January at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, the average wait in line was 35 minutes between 4 and 5 p.m., and the longest wait was 137 minutes. The wait at Terminal 1 at New York's Kennedy International Airport averaged 44 minutes in January for people arriving between 10 and 11 a.m. Enrolling requires a $100 application fee for a background check, plus a brief interview with a Customs officer.

For domestic travel, Global Entry pays off because it gets you into Precheck. Once TSA announced in the fall that enrollment in Global Entry and CBP's other "trusted travel" programs (Nexus for frequent travel across the Canadian border and Sentri for frequent travel across the Mexican border) would get you into Precheck, applications for Global Entry took off.

In February, for example, 26,602 people applied, more than triple the number of applications in February 2011, according to CBP. And February applications were up 42% from January as more and more travelers catch on.
TSA says it also wants as many people as possible in Precheck, which is still in pilot-testing phase. Both agencies say the programs can enhance screening of people they know nothing about if they can move low-risk people who submit to background checks out of the main queues.

Common Sense Review

So when Pres Obama is looking at cutting the airline budget to cut airline flight safety, now TSA is implementing a program to pay to skip security. Is it me or does this sound like a plan for another attack.

Let me see… If you pay $100 you get a background check and then skip security… So this is based on the premise that Al-Qaeda is a band of poor terrorist.. They buy their semi-automatic weapons at Kmart… (Well there is an available lay-away).

Gee, I believe they are quite funded that they can afford the $100 security fee. So how safe am I going to feel on air plane where it is full of impatience people who may have a bomb in the skivvies.

I hate lines but when it comes to safety in the air, I will in line with my shoes off and ready to make security easy and feel secure at 20,000 feet.