Originally Posted by
ND76
The airlines started selling non-refundable tickets in the 1980s in the aftermath of airline deregulation (which passed Congress in 1978 and resulted in the Civil Aeronautics Board going out of business; airlines prior to 1978 had to apply to the CAB for authority to fly between interstate city-pairs and had to file their tariffs with them). A black market in non-refundable tickets quickly emerged. The airlines were out to stop this, and a major (if not the major) purpose of airport security was to make sure that the person whose name was on the ticket was actually the person who was going to fly. However, anyone could enter the airsides so long as they went through the metal detectors. One manifestation of this was that Pittsburgh built a new midfield terminal with a shopping mall which encouraged local shoppers to visit, even though they had no intention to take a plane trip.
That all changed in the aftermath of 9/11/01. The airlines and airports wanted out of responsibility for airport security, and Congress, wanting to show the public that they were doing something, created the TSA. The TSA made a big deal of claiming that 100% ID checks were the panacea. This merely redirected passenger dissatisfaction with airport security away from the airlines and upon the federal government. Innovations like the PIT shopping mall were destroyed. Then you have the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber and the chemical mixing incident.
Yes, we have security theater, but I still contend that the major purpose of airport security is to prevent low-cost airline tickets from being "scalped".
I think the timeline is a little different than that. Long after deregulation, through the late 80's (and into the 90's I believe?) it was common for people to try and "share" tickets; lots of college bulletin boards would have things like "ticket for sale Houston-NYC April 5, female, $100". I did so myself. To crack down on that, airlines began doing ID checks, but they were done BY THE AIRLINE at checkin and/or the gate or boarding. It was not part of the airport-security/metal-detector/etc. process. I don't think ID checks as part of the physical security screening process started till 9/11.
I think one of the reasons for instituting "passengers-only" rules and ID checks post-9/11 was simply to cut down on the number of people going through security thus reducing resources needed for screening. Airlines were more than happy to go along with this, since it meant someone else was taking care of (and paying for) the "revenue protection" task for them.
Yes, ID checks as part of "security" is simply theater. TSA forcefully chanted (and the public swallowed without question) the whole "ID Matters!" mantra, although it couldn't, and still can't, answer the question "why?".
TSA was a way of certain politicians wanting to create a whole new addition to the federal workforce by selling the big lie of "privately-run airport security failed on 9/11" to a public wanting the government to "do something!" and sadly it is now a commonly-accepted but totally false notion that airport security was to blame for 9/11. It was pathetic that the Washington Post recently had an editorial advocating privatizing airport security, and the bulk of comments were against it and virtually every one of them invoked 9/11 as the reason not to privatize.