It is an issue, because the marginal cost of analysing an Airport for vulnerabilities and devising ways to defend against them doesn't decrease when you cover more airports. You have to Israelificate each and every airport by developing techniques and training a workforce which is not easily transferable.

Whaa? R&D on techinques and machinery should have economy of scale, not diseconomy of scale. And the Israelis would be happy to tell us how to do it.

If techniques and machinery alone were enough the TSA wouldn't have had any problem. Israel relies on information, design and training specific to Ben-Gurion airport and would have to repeat some of these steps if it ever needed to cover another one.

The TSA is run by idiots who didn't ask Israel in the first place.

my point was that if you have more airports you may also be simply a bigger country, with more resources.

I don't have the numbers but I'm pretty sure as it is Israel is spending an order of magnitude more per passenger than the TSA does. The fact that the TSA drill is inefficient (and ineffective) doesn't mean that it's expensive.

You have to look beyond the direct costs to the costs imposed on travellers and how their reaction impacts the airlines.

TSA's current model is expensive for the airlines because it is deterring people from flying.

It's expensive for airline travelers because it's adding significantly to the hassle of flying: I believe that many flyers would pay more for the Israeli model if it was at least equally effective because it saves time. I believe that they would pay even more if it was not only less hassle but more effective than the current "security theatre" approach.

ok, but that's point 1, which i suspect is getting me voted down. you're replying to me replying to someone questioning point 2.