A number of U.S. airlines and airport executives have complained about the long lines of passengers awaiting TSA security screening. American Airlines, in particular, has claimed that a number of passengers have missed their flights because they could not get through TSA’s checkpoints. Airport executives in Atlanta, Denver and Minneapolis as well as many others have also complained about the TSA’s inability to process passengers through screening checkpoints in a timely manner.
Airlines and airport objections to these long lines are not the only reason they are undesirable. From a security vulnerability standpoint, these lines of concentrated people are open invitations to suicide attackers. For this reason alone they should be eliminated.
So, how did we get to this current long line situation given TSA’s creation in 2002, its operations for a decade and a half, and the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars? More importantly, how do we fix the current problem of long passenger lines at our airport security checkpoints?
The origins of today’s specific problem go back to the months immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks against New York City and Washington, D.C. In another sense, one can say that lines at screening checkpoints have been a concern since the beginning of aviation security.
In the months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) assumed responsibility for aviation security screening at all 400-plus U.S. commercial airports. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had historically been responsible for this function. The transfer of this responsibility to the FAA’s parent organization was because of a presumptive FAA failure to properly discharge this function as a result of the 9/11 attacks. History, on the other hand, will offer complex causative factors as more of the aspects leading up to the 9/11 attacks become available to historians.
On assuming responsibility for the aviation security function in early 2002, DoT Secretary Norman Mineta established a 10-minute standard for processing passengers through screening checkpoints. When the TSA later became operational, TSA administrators enshrined Mineta’s 10-minute processing goal as a virtual standard throughout all commercial airports. This 10-minute passenger security screening standard became a maximum that should not be exceeded. Members of the Congress occasionally weighed in on the situation as a consequence of constituent complaints about what they considered excessive delays. TSA screeners failing to meet this standard were criticized, harassed, and retrained. In extreme cases, TSA supervisors and managers severely disciplined some screeners.
TSA subsequently became a subset of the newly created Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after its creation in late 2002. In 2015, the DHS Inspector General conducted a stringent test of the TSA’s security screening effectiveness. TSA reportedly failed over 80 percent of the tests. Federal lawmakers, those stalwart guarantors of our best interests, became alarmed during Congressional hearings. Congressional questioning of the Inspector General revealed that the TSA’s focus on “moving” passengers through the airport security screening checkpoints was being accomplished at the price of good security. Similar findings had been the result of a number of earlier tests of the TSA’s security effectiveness, but “moving” passengers held sway.
In early 2016, TSA’s new administrator, former Vice Commandant of the Coast Guard Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger, did the unexpected, at least as far as the U.S. airlines and several major airports were concerned. He took the IG’s findings to heart. Neffenger changed the emphasis from “moving” people through airport security screening checkpoints to a focus on improved security screening. Moreover, as a consequence of the IG’s tests, Neffenger mandated the retraining at a central location of all TSA screening personnel. These changes, along with a 5,000 TSA employee reduction by Congress in the TSA’s staffing over the past few years, have resulted in long passenger lines awaiting screening at our airports.
However, our current problems didn’t just happen since the 9/11 attacks. In a sense, our aviation security system has been a disaster for several decades –yes, decades. The U.S. was one of the leading countries in creating aviation security as a result of crimes against aviation that reached a crescendo with hijackings in the 1960s. The U.S. government and the U.S. airlines quickly created a basic aviation security system beginning in 1970 - 1974. This neophyte system was periodically expanded and enhanced through the 1990s with procedures and process, and with the introduction of significant screening technology improvements.
Unfortunately, our system was basically flawed from the outset in the 1970s. Until the creation of the TSA, it relied on the U.S. airlines to actually purchase the screening equipment and conduct the passenger and carry-on cabin articles screening. The U.S. government established the security standards for the airlines to implement. U.S. airlines didn’t believe the conduct of passenger screening was their responsibility, either functionally or financially. These economic entities were focused on service to their passengers and surviving by making a profit. These ancillary security functions served as a distraction. Consequently, the airlines were less than enthusiastic or diligent in performing their security functions.
And, the FAA, as the U.S. government’s regulator, oversight entity, and enforcer guru for aviation security, was ineffective in compelling the U.S. airlines to place the proper emphasis on aviation security. The reasons for the FAA’s and airlines' failures were primarily political. I have written why this was so in previous articles and in my book, Bombers, Hijackers, Body Scanners, and Jihadists.
The 9/11 Commission Report issued in June 2004 and my book contains the details of the U.S. aviation security failures. Suffice it to say that both the airlines and the government were complicit in those failures. At the risk of getting ahead of myself, I hasten to note that there are currently “Pied Piper” elements in Congress, as well as in private organizations that are working to return us to that former failed aviation security system. One of the most persistent in pursuing a return to the pre-9/11 failed aviation security system is Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.). The illogic of his arguments from a security standpoint seems to escape him even though the contradictions are patently obvious. We should avoid a return to the pre-9/11 privatized aviation security system at all costs.
A major remedy to the current long lines of passengers awaiting screening at airports is quite simple but economically unpalatable to the airlines, as well as politically unacceptable to the U.S. government. The solution is to:
- Allow only one (and only one) carry-on article per-person not to exceed total length, width, and depth of 40 inches (with exceptions for the flight crew, handicapped individuals, and parent(s) traveling with children)
- Re-implement a computerized profiling system
- Replace checkpoint X-ray screening units with sophisticated explosive detection and imaging units
- Double or triple the number of passenger whole-body screening scanners
- And, Congress will also have to re-authorize the approximately 5,000 staff that it has eliminated from the TSA’s authorized staffing levels.
These actions will not totally eliminate lines at airport security screening checkpoints. However, it will make the situation more manageable, and any remaining lines will be less of a target for any would-be suicide bomber.
A part of this solution was temporarily implemented for a brief period of time following the August 2006 threat of bombing of UK, Canadian, and U.S. airliners from the UK to Canada and the U.S. A security measure of only one very small carry-on article per passenger as was implemented by the UK and followed by European and U.S. authorities in the fall of 2006. This solution severely limited the number and size of any carry-on articles into passenger cabins with reasonable exceptions for the flight crew, handicapped individuals, and parent(s) traveling with children.
This practice should be implemented again today on a permanent basis. The total combined dimensions of the length, width, and depth of any article carried by a passenger into an airline passenger cabin should be constrained to fewer than 40 inches (with the noted exceptions above). The idea of reducing the size and number of passenger carry-on articles is not a new idea. Such constraints on passenger carry-on articles have been advocated by the U.S. Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) since the 1980s.
The resulting consequence of this action in late 2006 was a drastic reduction of the articles that had to be security screened by an X-ray operator at passenger screening checkpoints. The benefits of this were two-fold: 1) it significantly improved the probability of the X-ray screener detecting contraband in any carry-on article, and 2) it reduced the number of items to be screened and therefore decreased passenger carry-on article screening time.
Unfortunately, the negative consequences of this action are multifold. First, reducing the number of passenger carry-on articles increased by approximately 50-70 percent the number of articles per-passenger that had to be checked for carriage in the airplane’s cargo hold. This increase in checked baggage required an increase in passenger check-in time. It also required additional airline personnel to handle this increase in the number of checked bags/articles.
Re-implementing this security measure will increase the number of baggage/articles in the cargo hold thus resulting in the elimination of additional space that has been used for the transport of other goods. This would also require a commensurate increase in the checked baggage/articles fees to compensate for the loss of cargo revenue in passenger airplanes. Moreover, the airlines would now have displeased passengers due to the increased baggage costs. Passengers would also be unhappy because of the inconvenience of not being able to bring “wheeled baggage” with their personal articles sometimes just short of the proverbial “kitchen sink” into the passenger cabin.
There are also positive safety enhancements by reducing the number of heavy articles that passengers currently place in the overhead bins above passenger seating areas. A number of individuals are injured each year by objects falling from these overhead bins. However, it is notable that the FAA refuses to address this safety issue.
Increasing the number of whole-body scanning units and replacing X-ray screening units with genuine explosive detection/imaging units would add a quantum leap in aviation security effectiveness. The small checkpoint size explosive detection units have been available for several years; however, the TSA has never deployed any such units operationally in U.S. Whole-body scanning units have been deployed in limited numbers at virtually all U.S. airport screening checkpoints for several years. However, some passengers and anti-scanner organizations object to the use of these whole-body screening units.
These actions are obviously unacceptable to U.S. airlines for these specific economic consequences and their problems with unhappy passengers. U.S. airlines will refuse to change these practices until and/or if they are forced to do so which currently seems to be unlikely.
A second companion change in the U.S. aviation security system should be the return by the U.S. government to a computerized profiling system. This is unacceptable to Congress that appears to believe that any profiling system is racially biased and is therefore constitutionally prohibited. The fact that race has never been a collected data item for aviation’s computerized profiles makes no difference to lawmakers.
Our Congress still holds to this view notwithstanding the fact that a very rudimentary FAA/airline computerized profile identified several of the 9/11 hijackers. The fact that the FAA/airlines failed to take the proper security screening actions vis-à-vis these 9/11 profile selectees does not negate the fact that the profiles worked. The 9/11 Commissioners strongly recommended that a more sophisticated computerized profile system be developed and implemented.
The benefits of a computerized profiling system are multiple. First, it would enable the TSA to focus its primary attentions on those persons who potentially pose the greatest threat to aviation safety. It would not eliminate the need to continue to subject all passengers to some level of security measures. However, individual passenger overall throughput should be increased with the implementation of these targeted security measures.
A complementary need would be to randomly select a small percentage of non-profile selectees for enhanced security screening. Some of the passengers randomly selected for this added security attention will most likely be unhappy, but it is a necessary requirement. These several measures, along with the continued Behavior Profiling Officer’s scrutiny of all persons within the public areas of passenger terminals, should be sufficient to provide an acceptable level of security during low-threat periods.
So, if these optional actions are so objectionable as to preclude their adoption, why then am I proposing their adoption?
The point is that there is a solution to long lines of passengers at screening checkpoints.
Alternatively, the airlines/airports and the government can “live” with the current long-line problem. Passengers, however, will have to show up as much as three or more hours before flight time to ensure that they make their flight. The government will also have to seriously consider substantially increasing TSA staffing levels and adding screening checkpoints because of the passengers’ unhappiness and their complaints to their elected representatives. Obviously, this raises costs.
Simply attempting to address the long lines problem by adding airport screening checkpoints and increasing TSA’s staffing brings into play other negative factors. Airports would have to provide additional space for more security screening checkpoints and this space is simply not available at most U.S. airports. The government would also have to purchase and deploy more checkpoint screening technology, etc. The only entities that will be certain to be pleased with these factors will be the technology companies providing the screening units.
Alternatively, we could adopt the “Pied Piper” solution being promoted by some Congressional members and companion organizations and some airports. Their solution is to return the aviation security function to private industry tied to individual airports. To do so would take the effectiveness of the U.S. aviation security system back to the pre-9/11 system. In that system, the U.S. airports would engage private security companies to conduct the security screening functions. The pre-9/11 U.S. aviation security system was a disaster and any return to a similar system would have similar consequences.
Or, we can continue with Mineta’s 10-minute rule where facilitation of passenger movement through checkpoints takes primacy over good aviation security screening practices. This latter choice and any return to a pre-9/11 failed system begs the question–do we as passengers wish to contemplate the possibility of being part of an event where an airplane smashes into a building? Is this possibility preferable to standing in line for three hours awaiting screening before we fly somewhere? Or do we implement the five enumerated security actions I have identified along with the added expenditures and changes proposed in the foregoing paragraphs?
About the Author:
Billie H. Vincent served for 34 years in the U.S. Government in Air Traffic Control, Training, Regulatory Activities and Aviation Security, and now 26 years in the private sector. He has spent the last 30 years in the field of aviation security and counter-terrorism and has written, instructed and spoken extensively on the subject. Mr. Vincent's firm, Aerospace Services International, Inc. (ASI) that he founded and has run for the past 26 years did the security master planning for several of the world's new major airports over the past two decades, e.g. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Incheon, South Korea; Suvarnabhumi (Bangkok), Thailand; and Abu Dhabi. In some of these airports his firm also provided the security conceptual design and prepared the security procedures and other documents for the new airport. Mr. Vincent's firm has also been engaged in the design and oversight of the construction of several Head-of-State properties in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the UK. Noteworthy is the fact that his firm specified the security systems for a Head-of-State new Boeing 747 and provided the oversight while the security systems were being installed. During this time, ASI also provided Head-of-State and other high-level officials security protection for several persons traveling within the U.S. Mr. Vincent is a graduate of Dowling College in New York, has an MPA from Auburn University, Montgomery Campus, Alabama. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Air War College in residence at Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama. He had the pleasure of serving on the staff of a congressman for 9 months in 1980 in a Legislative Fellowship program while a member of the FAA.
