Air Marshal program costing $200m per arrest

[Brainster]

There may be a valid point here. In the immediate aftermath of 9-11 I think everybody would have said that every flight needs an Air Marshal. But we're nine years on and not a single other hijacking. $800 mill sounds like a drop in the bucket of federal spending but I'm a "no drops should be wasted" kind of guy.

 

[gumboot]

According to this story the US Air Marshal program costs over US$800m per years and makes, on average, slightly over four arrests per year.

Let's look at that, shall we?

Four arrests at $200 million per arrest.

9/11 consisted of four hijackings.

It cost the USA $40 billion in insurances losses alone, or $10 billion per hijacking.

That means, just looking at insurance costs, the Air Marshal program has a potential benefit of $9.8 billion per incident. Not bad. I shudder to think of the additional losses 9/11 caused, which would push the benefits of the Air Marshal program even higher.

That's the funny thing about these sorts of statistics. They say what you want them to say.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Claus, come back.

There's money in this program!