[Butch Cassidy Slept Here]

If the airlines had to face the same penalties the owners of faulty burglar alarm systems face, then these types of police calls would drop sharply.

Many cities will allow the owners of burglar alarms to have a certain number of "false" calls, over a given period of time, without charge. Once the "free" allowance has been used, additional "false" calls subject the owner to a service charge for each call.

Airport police departments could assign airlines a number of "free" security calls based on, say, 5% of the total number of passengers the given airline boarded in the past six months. "False," or bogus, calls exceeding the "free" allowance would be charged, to the airline, at $500 a call.

Mr. Blanchard's case is a prime example of how US-based airlines are using airport police departments as customer service staff. With Spirit Air being the first US-based airline to dismantle its customer service department, it will be interesting to see how many bogus calls the Fort Lauderdale Airport police—Spirit Air’s home base—will tolerate before Spirit starts having to pay costs to the police.