The Senate has, unusually, bowed to reality, and extended the deadline to have baggage-checking equipment in place at airports.

I’ll bet this won’t be the last time. This part of the legislation (like most of the airport security legislation hastily rushed through last fall) is severely flawed. Even if the equipment were in place, it would only give a false sense of security, and dramatically increase delays and costs. My understanding is that the state of the art of the machinery still provides a high number of false positives (inconvenient). I don’t know if they also provide false negatives (deadly), but if so, it would be as bad as the passenger-screening system.

I was thinking about this coming back from Hawaii. We had an opportunity to get an earlier flight out of Honolulu, but we’d already checked our bags. Accordingly, we had to stay with the flight that our bags were checked on. Just one more example of how we’re being inconvenienced by conventional thinking in airline security policies.

It made the notion of separating baggage and passengers more and more appealing, as suggested by Richard Wainwright a few months ago (look for the message titled “Airline Security” dated April 25, 2002).

I started giving it some thought, and it’s not obvious to me that such a system would be worse than the current paradigm (luggage and passenger on the same airplane), and it might actually be better, and even cheaper.

We already have an infrastructure for moving passengers in place (the airlines). We also have in place an infrastructure for moving cargo, same day if necessary (Fedex, UPS and their competitors). Why not allow both to specialize on what they each do best?

Taking the luggage off the planes would have the effect of removing any risk of baggage bombs. They could only be slipped aboard carry-ons, and there would be no more need to match luggage and passengers. The luggage would be carried on cargo aircraft, where the only risk is to the crew (a risk that cargo crews already carry).

Potential objections are, of course, increased costs and decreased convenience. But I’m not sure that it’s true. The current system of schlepping your heavy bags to the airport, standing in line to check them, and standing in another line to wrestle them off the carousel and into your car isn’t particular convenient. I’d prefer to have it picked up at my home, and delivered to my destination.

Would it increase costs? Probably, but not as much as one might think, and probably one of the effects would be to do more carry on, and more efficient packing. The current model of baggage charge bundled with the ticket isn’t necessarily the only or best one.

Since I avoid checking when I can, I subsidize the people who have two (or any) heavy bags, because we both pay the same fare, or more precisely (since probably no two people pay the same fare, given the arcane pricing schemes airlines use) there’s no relationship between my fare and how much luggage I have (unless I exceed allowable numbers of bags or weight). Restoring that relationship would make for a more efficient market.

A different model might be to have a price for a passenger ticket, which includes your carry on, but have a separate fee for luggage. That way, only those who actually have luggage will have to pay for it.

The passenger tickets would now be cheaper, since they don’t have to cover the costs of the luggage handling infrastructure, and the aircraft can either fly lighter, saving fuel, or more efficiently, perhaps by putting in a separate sleeper or steerage class in what’s currently the luggage compartment. It might also allow the passenger fleet size to be reduced as a result.

The luggage would be handled by either an existing cargo operator, like Fedex, or a new entrant specialized for that market, or the airline itself with a separate aircraft fleet. You could either drop off your luggage at the airport, and pick it up at your destination airport, or for an additional fee it could be picked up at your house and dropped at your destination. If you can pack a couple days ahead of time, you’ll save money–the price will go up for overnight or same day, just as it does for package delivery.

I don’t know exactly how the industry would restructure, but I’ll bet it would, and it would solve the luggage bomb problem once and for all. I would be very interested to see the industry response if the FAA were to put out an NPRM (Notification of Proposed Rule Making) stating that as of, say, January 1, 2004, no passenger aircraft would any longer be allowed to carry luggage, other than carry on.