A Trump administration proposal to increase the 9/11
Passenger Security Fee that is assessed on airline tickets has drawn the
expected opposition from commercial carriers. But analysts, by and large, have
a more sanguine view of the proposal.
"I don't think it will suppress demand," said Rui
Neiva, an aviation policy analyst at the Washington-based think tank Eno
Center for Transportation. "If we were talking about a $20 to $30
increase, maybe. But not $2 or $3."
The Trump team hasn't specified exactly how much it would
like to raise the fee from its current $5.60 per one-way trip. But in a budget
blueprint released on March 16, the administration stated that the fees should
be raised high enough to cover 75% of aviation security operations.
The TSA spent $6 billion on aviation security in 2016,
government records show, and it generated $3.7 billion from the 9/11 fee. That's
approximately 61% of its funding. As such, meeting that 75% threshold would
require an increase of approximately $1 per one-way trip.
However, the math is more complicated than that. Since 2013,
Congress has diverted more than a third of the 9/11 fee to costs unrelated to
security. So in 2016, only $2.2 billion of security fee proceeds actually was
spent on security funding, while $1.5 billion was used to cover other federal
budget needs. If a similar funding diversion continues, the 9/11 fee would need
to be roughly double its current $5.60 per one-way flight to cover 75% of
aviation security expenses.
Such increases would have to be approved by Congress, which
set the 9/11 Passenger Security Fee in legislation.
In a statement, the trade organization Airlines for America
condemned the Trump administration proposal, saying that instead of an increase
in the 9/11 fee, Congress should return the money it is diverting.
"Airlines for America stands in firm opposition to tax
increases that further burden consumers and risk deterring air travel,"
spokesman Vaughn Jennings wrote in an email to Travel Weekly.
Some analysts view the question of how large a portion of
aviation security costs should be shouldered by those who fly, as opposed to by
the general public, to be as much a matter of political philosophy as of
dollars and cents.
In the budget blueprint, the Trump administration said the
proposed fee increase is intended "to ensure that the cost of government
services is not subsidized by taxpayers who do not directly benefit from those
programs."
Ken Button, a transportation policy professor at the George
Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government, agrees with that
approach.
"The people on the plane, the passengers, have the
responsibility," he said. "The burden should go mainly on the
passenger. And the freight carrier as well."
But aviation analyst Bob Mann of R.W. Mann & Co.,
expressed a different view.
"Do you charge people on the street for policing?"
he asked rhetorically.
Mann cited the major impact that 9/11 has had on the
public-at-large as an example of why aviation security should be substantially
subsidized by all taxpayers, whether or not they fly.
"The cost of getting it wrong goes far beyond the
number of passengers on any particular flight," he said.
Richard Bloom, the director of Terrorism, Intelligence and
Security Studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, said that
arguments about political philosophy, or even dollars and cents, largely miss
the point when it comes to discussing aviation security.
"The whole public discourse is actually backwards from
how a coherent planning process should be," Bloom said.
The White House, Congress and policy advocates, he said,
consistently start the aviation security debate by looking at funding, and then
only later determine what needs should be met with the dollars allocated.
A proper process would begin with an intelligence analysis
of the threats at hand.
"You need to focus on the threat first and then figure
out what you want to do about it and then how much it will cost," Bloom
said.