I’ve seen a lot of news reports lauding Israeli airliner El Al’s famous security measures, but none of the reports estimated how much it would cost to have such a system in the United States. So here are my estimates.
USA Today reports that security for El Al costs $90 million a year for the airline which only runs an average of 40 flights per day. That works out to a security cost of $6,164 per flight.
American Airlines, which is the largest airline in the United States, was running 2,400 flights per day. Assuming similar security costs, that means it would take almost $5.4 billion per year just to protect American Airlines flights with that level of security.
What about economies of scale? I can assure you the costs would drop immensely.