Airport Privileges

Until this past weekend, I had not considered applying for TSA PreCheck. SeaTac made me reconsider. Thankfully we arrived early with plenty of time to spare because I was shocked by the snaking long line that traversed what seemed like half of the north end. There must have been close to a thousand people in line. Just finding the end of the line was tricky. The airport had anticipated this because an airport employee held up a sign high up in bright green reading “End of the Line”. We walked quite a-ways before even seeing it.

We had walked past two equally large screening areas, both dedicated to TSA PreCheck, with practically no line. It seemed highly incongruous to have two thirds of the screening sections with no line while one third has a huge line blocking foot traffic across the terminal. When we got to the end of the line, we asked the signholder how long the wait would be. She politely estimated 45 minutes. I’m sure she had being asked the question numerous times. TSA must have realized that the line length was growing exponentially quickly because it started to move relatively quickly not long after we joined the end. They had sniffer dogs while we were in line, and we didn’t have to remove anything from our bags for the X-ray because they were trying to move folks through as quickly as possible.

Thankfully we got to our gate just as our group was starting to board without having to run. Not having any elite status, we weren’t going to board early anyway. But all this made me think about paying for privilege. TSA PreCheck is $85 for five years. Flying anything beyond Coach/Economy is much more than I would pay for a plane ticket. I don’t fly enough to accrue elite status on any airline. If I had, it means someone (hopefully not me) had paid for my many flights.

What are the privileges? Special airport lounges. Shorter lines at the check-in counter, sometimes with a red carpet. A potentially significantly shorter line going through security. (I’d never experienced such a stark difference until this past weekend.) Not needing to remove belts, shoes, jackets, laptops and 3-1-1 liquids. Nicer seats with more legroom on the plane. More space for your carry-on luggage. Better food? At least in business class and above. Hardly any restroom line. We’re all going to the same place, in the same metal tube flying through the sky; yet if you can pay, you get all these other perks. Too bad you can’t pay to shorten flying time.

My mind then turned to education. As an industry – and yes, it is an industry – does education have similar pay-for-privilege features? In the U.S., the diversity of schools, colleges and universities results, to some extent, with widening the disparity between the haves and have-nots. That’s not to say that there aren’t measures to increase socioeconomic diversity within educational institutions; it’s just that on average the disparity might be increasing. In my neck of the woods, the most expensive neighborhoods have the ‘best’ schools. To access them, you pay higher rent or buy a more expensive home so your kids can attend a school in your zipcode of choice. There is a burgeoning tutoring industry to give kids the edge in the competitive marketplace of education; extreme versions of this can be found across East Asia. Private schools and colleges offering small classes, elite amenities, and prestigious networks cost a lot more to attend.

Much more can be said about pay-for-privilege in education, although the stark difference is usually not noticed within a single institution but rather with a broader lens comparing institutions and viewing the system as a whole. But at the airport, you see the stark differences upfront. I haven’t signed up for TSA PreCheck yet. But I might, before my next trip that requires air travel, even though I think there’s something rotten here. Airports around the world seem to do just fine without this. There should be a better solution.