Airport Security Design Simplified

Israel has the best system in the world and it starts before the airport building and has none of the groping that the USA feels is necessary. You should be able to get some details on line..My info comes from an Israel citizen and engineer that travels a lot and has a military background.

While I agree with you thank Israel's airport security is to be respected, I can't help but wonder how their technique/system/methods would impact a much busier airport. I fly frequently and really like my home airport (Tampa International). After complaining about some of my least favorite (Atlanta, Chicago, and JFK to name a few) it dawned on me that if Tampa passed as many passengers through their airport, the experience may not be quite so enjoyable.

Does the same apply to security? One necessary component of airport security is a reasonable time delay in passenger's travel. While that certainly isn't the most important factor, if TSA decided they were going to be super thorough and strip search every passenger not only would there be an outcry due to the strip search but also do to how long it would take to perform all of those searches. Instead of itineraries saying to arrive 75-120 minutes prior to your flight, the advice would be more like 200-300 minutes. Would be people be willing to tolerate that?

I don't believe that the Israelis spend that much time per passenger (or anywhere near that amount of time). But in Sept of this year 1.2 million passengers passed through Ben Gurion Airport. Or approx 14 million per year. Compare that to Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport that had almost 90 million passengers going through it in 2010. Ben Gurion Airport is not even in the top 30 airports for 2010.