Incentives, Designed Ineptitude and Friction

The story of airports.

I’m headed to Nashville this morning so you’re getting this one on the fly in the airport!

Let’s have a quick chat about the easiest way to get people to do what you want.

Toronto Pearson Airport made a net income of $265,000,000 in 2023 so it’s safe to say airports could fixes these problems if they wanted.

Why do you have to wait in a line at the airport?

No seriously.

You could diagnose any line as: “A disproportionate amount of people attempting to access a good or service when compared to the people processing that good or service.”

I’m not telling you anything revolutionary here. All businesses do this. Here’s the key:

Business bet on how long you are willing to wait in line in order to receive what you asked for. At the airport — because you don’t have a choice — they could theoretically tell you that you have to be there 24 hours before your flight. That would cause some logistics inefficiencies but isn’t a limitation of the lining up function.

If you had to wait 60 minutes in line for a coffee you’d walk down the street or buy a coffee pot.

My argument is that there is no reason we should need to wait in line as long as we do at airports. Aside from the fact that we’re accustomed to it.

Airports know this.

It’s why Nexus, Global Entry, TSA Pre and CLEAR exist.

It’s because of these programs that airport lines need to continue to exist. If we decreased lines by increasing staffing there would be no need for these profit centers to exist.

It is because of the friction and frustration of regular lines that people pay to skip them.

Some airports are limited by space thanks to increasing demand for air travel. Every airport I’ve seen complete renovations in the last 5 years has included upgrades to security checkpoints to meet demand.

Blake this seems like an oversimplification of variable staffing needs and complicated airport processes.

I’ve been travelling through airports for 25 years and can likely count on one hand how many times I’ve seen a fully staffed security checkpoint. I’ve never seen a fully staffed customs checkpoint. Despite lines at peak times over 60+ minutes. This would indicate a purposeful understaffing.

You can go down the rabbit hole of the “people don’t want the job… they do for the right wage” dichotomy.

Ultimately it’s on the airport to hire appropriately. Again, $265M profit.

Airport staffing requirements are not acutely variable. Flight schedules are preprogrammed months in advance, there is no excuse for airports to not know demand requirements.

My only conclusion is designed ineptitude.

This is to say nothing of the incentives in place for things like ArriveCAN or Mobile Passport Control (MPC) to allow for some early stage social credit scoring under the guise of convenience.