A hazard-based analysis of airport security transit times

Airport security screening, and the amount of time it costs travelers, has been a persistent concern to travelers, airport authorities, and airlines – particularly in recent years where changes in perceived threats have resulted in changes in security procedures that have caused great uncertainty relating to security transit times. To gain a better understanding of the factors influencing travelers' security transit times, determinants of security transit times are studied by using anonymous Bluetooth media access control address matching to determine the actual security travel times of individual passengers at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. These transit-time data are then analyzed using a random-parameters hazard-based duration model to statistically explore the factors that affect airport security transit times. The estimation results reveal, as expected, that a wide variety of factors affect security transit times including the number of enplaning seats (reflecting flight schedules), weather conditions, day of week, as well as obvious variables such as traveler volume and the number of open security lanes. The detailed statistical findings show that current security procedures are reactive instead of proactive, and that substantial reductions in security transit times could be attained by optimizing security operations using a statistical model such as the one estimated in this paper.