[tapu]

Originally Posted by Andrea

The following posting is by a member of flyertalk, from the Travel Safety/Security forum. The number of per day passengers is an estimate provided in a posting by an employee of TSA.

"Even if all 2 million passengers alarmed, and using the (faux) stat above of 99.99% resolved towards the passenger's benefit, why should those 1,999,800 people (99.99%) be inconvenienced for the 200 people (0.01%) that may have something that is "banned" from the secure side?

And, admittedly guessing, I would guess a large majority of the 'guilty' are for questionable items (too much water, nailclippers w/ a file attached, every day pocket knife). Another fair percentage for reasonable items that were inadvertantly brought. Leaving only 1 or 2 that may have brought something with ill intent. (And I have to question the 1 or 2 as we would be hearing about it more often if that were the case.)

So the TSA chooses, in my opinion, to waste a lot of time, energy, and money searching all 2,000,000 passengers daily (initially intended to be screened the same) to more than a typical administrative search (WTMD and x-ray carryons) for a less than 0.01% chance that that passenger is actually "The 1".

As well, I know several have seen the estimate that the odds of being killed by a terrorist flying to, from, or within the US on an airplane is roughly 1 in 10,000,000. Extrapolating out, and using a 100 passenger per plane average, roughly means that once every 500 days that "The 1" passenger has the true ill intent. One passenger out of 100 million passengers - I have a better chance to win the lottery."

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Andrea

I can totally get behind the math of it. Following the same reasoning, I don't play the lottery.

But there is a much more complex overlay on it all. Public perception--and "enemy perception," if you wiil, impact of an incident on the psychology of the nation, the economy, and so on. The picture is, I think, larger than weighing probabilities.