Originally Posted by
Spiff
The federal government should have absolutely no say in airport or aircraft security. There is no good reason for the federal government not to be punted off all airport property and all aircraft.
Originally Posted by
Aubie_NoFlyNoMore
Have each airline decide it's own security and let the customer choose whether they want to fly the airline with little security and perhaps more risk, or the airline with lots of security and maybe (or maybe not) less risk.
Can you imagine the mess if the rules were defined by each airline, or each airport? You would have to re-clear security when making a domestic connection, if the originating airline or airport had different rules than your connection.
From a practical point of view, we need a single national standard on what is allowed into the secure area and onto a plane. While I suppose that could be defined by an industry group like the Air Transit Association, the federal government is the obvious choice.
Who actually enforces those standards (TSA, DOT, airlines, airports?) is a whole separate issue, of course.