Now in Ask the Pilot: TSA's Summer Meltdown.
Security lines are out the door, and the most sensible fix is the one nobody will talk about.
Conventional wisdom holds that the best way to address the problem is to shuttle in more TSA guards and personnel. Indeed this would speed things up slightly, but it’s a superficial fix that fails to address the root problem: that our entire checkpoint strategy is misguided. Budgeting for more staff only buttresses a system that is wasteful and irrational to start with. If anything, TSA doesn’t need more personnel at the checkpoint, it needs
fewer. We don't need MORE security. We need better, more streamlined security.
There are two fundamental flaws in our approach. First is the idea that every single person who flies, from infant children to elderly folks in wheelchairs, is seen as a potential terrorist of equal threat. Second, and and even more maddening, is the immense amount of time we spend rifling through people’s bags in the hunt for harmless liquids, pointy objects, and other perceived “weapons.” In a system that processes more than two million passengers every day of the week, neither of these tactics is effective or sustainable.
Underlying all of this is a huge and painful irony that few people ever acknowledge: that pretty much none of the checkpoint rules put in place after the attacks of 9/11 would have prevented those attacks in the first place. The success of the attacks had almost nothing to do with airport security. What weapons the men used was irrelevant. Had boxcutters been banned, they would have used something else. Heck, pencils would have done the job, probably. The only weapon that mattered was the simplest, lowest-tech weapon of all: the element of surprise. What the men exploited was our understanding, at the time, of what a hijacking was and how it was expected to unfold. The “security failure” of 9/11 wasn’t letting boxcutters onto planes. It was a failure of passenger and crew awareness, of cockpit entry protocols, and a total breakdown of communication at the levels of our FBI and CIA, both of which had been tracking the hijackers.
The full article, including a list of Seven Ideas to Make Airport Security Better, is here...
http://www.askthepilot.com/tsa-summer-meltdown/
------------------------------------------------------------
Per FT guidelines, I disclose that I am the author of the article linked to, above. Thanks.