Air travel in America is a mess right now. There are interminable lines at airport security, near misses or crashes on the ground and in the air, and the airports themselves remain overcrowded and antiquated. Although it is easy to blame short-term causes, such as the failure of Congress to appropriate money for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the bigger problem is the government is simply not good at running air travel.
The idea of letting the private sector manage passenger security, air traffic control, and airports may seem far-fetched, but it is the norm in much of the world. The United States, supposedly home to ardent free marketeers, actually has one of the most socialized air travel sectors anywhere. Other countries have demonstrated the success of a private-sector model. America should learn from them.
Take airport security. Just two months after the 9/11 attacks, a panicked Congress passed a bill to nationalize airport security under a new bureaucracy, the TSA. While older airport security systems, contracted out to private companies, had clearly failed on that day, nobody convincingly explained why a federal agency staffed by civil servants would be better.
