As someone who flies more than a quarter-million miles a year, I take airline safety seriously. Along with the Interstate Highway System and our communications networks, the U.S. aviation infrastructure brings our vast country together and drives the commerce that makes us strong. This makes it a target—something we need to protect.
Extraordinary amounts of money and effort have gone into airline safety since 9/11. The government, for example, brought most of the disparate agencies responsible for homeland security—including domestic and international air travel—under one roof. Part of this apparatus is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which eliminated many of the existing weaknesses in the system and upgraded security across the board, including better screening of all checked luggage and cargo.
Fortunately, no new attacks have taken place. While we’ve experienced some close calls, we’ve been both lucky and successful. The two probably go hand in hand. The government agencies responsible for protecting us, while misguided at times, have for the most part worked smart, seeking to prevent attacks in the planning stages. We owe the government our thanks for a job well done.
Still, the U.S. system of government depends on the confidence and approval of the public. While the TSA has kept us safe, some of its actions have appeared silly, unnecessarily violating our privacy and inconveniencing us. As a result, these procedures have turned the agency into a subject of often-deserved ridicule.
The color-coded terror alert system, for example, which the TSA ultimately dropped, hurt its credibility. While the system had five alert levels, we remained at orange—one notch below the highest alert level (red)—for all nine years the system existed. Saturday Night Live and other comedy shows had fun lambasting it. Is it any wonder the public came to consider color-coding meaningless?
Many people asked the obvious question: If the government is wasting time and money on this, how many other stupid things is it doing?
The TSA, while clearly well intentioned, also has been clumsy—if not knee jerk—in its reaction to rare in-flight incidents. After Richard Reid attempted to set off explosives in his sneaker, the administration ordered all air passengers to take off their shoes before going through security. It may have been a boost for sock manufacturers, but it probably didn’t do anything to enhance security. Indeed, when you pass through airport security in most other countries, no one obliges you to remove your shoes, even on flights to the United States. Hundreds of domestic and international flights have taken me through airports in France, Germany, Peru, Ecuador, China, and Japan, and not once has anyone inspected my footwear. Passengers walk through metal detectors with their shoes on.
The TSA overreacted again after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged “underwear bomber,” attempted to detonate explosives on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. This time the agency hastily decreed, among other measures, that pillows (which a prospective bomber could use to cover up while prepping explosives in his underclothes) and trips to the bathroom would be verboten during the last hour of inbound international flights. In addition, on-board screens showing the plane’s location could no longer be used. The edict was quickly rescinded, but the fact that the TSA hadn’t thought through its response damaged its credibility. What next? As one comic quipped: “We hear the underwear bomber was sitting in seat 15A, so TSA has ordered the airlines to remove seat 15A from all aircraft. That’ll take care of the problem.”
The only way the TSA can maximize our safety is to have the American people on its side. It can’t afford to squander limited good will on reactionary, sometimes silly measures it must later withdraw. The TSA needs to build itself a reputation as a thoughtful, sober, and efficient organization.
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