Safe At Home? An Experiment in Domestic Airline Security

The paper describes a scientific experiment about a contentious policy issue: What costs and disruptions might arise if U.S. domestic airlines adopted positive passenger bag-match (PPBM), an antiterrorist measure aimed at preventing baggage unaccompanied by passengers from traveling in aircraft luggage compartments? The heart of the effort was a two-week live test of domestic bag-match that involved 11 airlines, 8,000 flights, and nearly 750,000 passengers. Working with the Federal Aviation Administration, the authors played a major role in designing, monitoring, and analyzing the live test. However, the live test provided “raw materials” for an assessment of PPBM rather than the assessment itself. As we discuss, there are difficulties in extrapolating from a short experiment involving 4% of domestic flights to the steady-state consequences of systemwide bag-match.