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Security has been privatized at a few airports, like San Francisco and Kansas City. How does security screening effectiveness, efficiency, and cost compare at those two airports relative to all other TSA-operated US airport security? I haven't seen any side by side comparisons -- does anyone know if any reputable journalists or researchers have tried to compare?

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Comparisons with the Kansas City airport will probably mislead. It has a very different architecture than most other airports: it's aggressively anti-hub. That is to say, although it nominally has three terminals, each of those effectively has four or five separate secured areas.

This actually works fairly well for trips starting or ending in Kansas City, not least because it means that no security wait will reach the ridiculous lengths you see in many other airports. It also means that screening personnel have to operate 15 different security lines rather than two or three. That may be why TSA left?

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