>Airports are not helpless. In 2014 Dallas-Forth Worth airport in Texas paid for extra automatic passport gates to slash queue sizes. And airlines around the world often pay a small sum per passenger to speed business-class customers through special passport-control lanes. Many governments would gladly shift the cost of passport checks. Too gladly, reckon some airports, who fear the entire bill for passport control may eventually be dumped on them.
We've got TSA holding the nation's airports hostage back in 2015 by slowing EVERYTHING down in order to get more funding. Many airports/airlines now offering "expedited security" as part of their "pay for the oxygen on the plane" price plans, this on top of CLEAR/PreCheck. So now TSA knows they can do that, if they don't get the funding from the gov they'll just leverage schemes to get it from airlines/airports, as the article indicates.
I remember as a kid, my parents scrounged together enough cash for disneyland tickets, the flights there, and some nights at a motel. There wasn't room in the budget for comfort items like food on the plane, which back then was free. I can't go full grumpy old man mode cause I'm only 27, but damn does it feel like it will only get shittier and shittier to be poor in this country.
We've got TSA holding the nation's airports hostage back in 2015 by slowing EVERYTHING down in order to get more funding. Many airports/airlines now offering "expedited security" as part of their "pay for the oxygen on the plane" price plans, this on top of CLEAR/PreCheck. So now TSA knows they can do that, if they don't get the funding from the gov they'll just leverage schemes to get it from airlines/airports, as the article indicates.
I remember as a kid, my parents scrounged together enough cash for disneyland tickets, the flights there, and some nights at a motel. There wasn't room in the budget for comfort items like food on the plane, which back then was free. I can't go full grumpy old man mode cause I'm only 27, but damn does it feel like it will only get shittier and shittier to be poor in this country.