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TSA Pre-Check charges $78/5 years to recover the cost of the screening process, which they've documented incredibly well: https://www.tsa.gov/sites/default/files/fee-development-repo...

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TSA Pre-Check's artifically low, non-market price for line cutting is the reason Clear isn't selling for $100+ per flight, with several layers of price discrimination.

In a free market, there wouldn't be a need to sell line cutting in the first place because it would be legal to run an airline that you can fly on without dealing with the TSA at all. Forcing everyone to go through the TSA is inherently non-market, so there can't be a market price for it.

I don't think Clear would have the same number of customers if they charged that much. Everyone would continue to stand in line and complain about how bad the TSA is at its job.

If it were an option selected when purchasing a ticket, I suspect it would be on the order of first/business class in terms of popularity. Maybe the price point needs some work, but certainly ~a lot~ more than $15/yr for the first tier of priority).

Clear and Pre-Check both have signficant friction to sign-up. If line cutting was offered with little friction (i.e. without security considerations), I think it would be quite popular.

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