TSA Meltdown: The Solution Nobody Will Talk About.
 

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.

Perfect solution. Stuff I've stated since long before I retired.

Moving thread to the TS/S Forum.
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

Simples - half the number of flights

Unfortunately, the masses have to be convinced that 9/11 was not caused by screening failures and 95% don't want to hear it.

Then they have to accept that the liquids plot was untenable and that shoe's aren't a problem either. Unfortunately TSA has jumped on both to maintain their fear mongering. AskTSA still perpetuates the "liquids explosive threat" and people eat it up.

The TSA has to fear-monger and invent threats if they are to stay in business.

All this is far too logical, going all the way back to the ID look over (I won't call it a check, since my there's no actual check involved.) the person has a bomb or doesn't and they're checking for that. Doesn't matter who you are. You're career something or you aren't.

Common sense and TSA don't mix.
People exhibiting any sort of critical analysis (like the OP) are starting to seem like geniuses amid all the fearmongering and propaganda.

Lots of people have and are talking about it. Problem is the people who need to talk about it, those in a position to do something about it, won't. They either don't think the real problem is a problem, or they want the status quo to continue with money being wasted.

and in the near term - they could have the 50% of staff that stand around all the time start to do some actual work. I can't believe they are requesting more staff when half of them are always standing around or doing something stupid like moving bins back and forth.

also, you could probably spend 10% of their operating costs on development of better scanning equipment which would probably have a much better ROI on threat reduction.

TSA needs consultants to improve their staffing levels and work requirements.
Hire me. ;)

And yet DL is spending millions of dollars this summer to hire its own employees to help with directing people to lines, returning bins, etc. to "help" TSA because of the long lines. If the thousands of TSA employees standing around would do something useful, airports wouldn't be in sure a mess.

Given the tiny tiny tiny fraction of domestic flyers who have mal intent (we know this from the lack of actual attacks and attempts on domestic flights), the vast majority of people should be going through pre-check by default (i.e. without a special background check), and the extra scrutiny should be reserved for secondary. It won't happen any time soon because there's no benefit to be had for the people who decide what the screening to be- it's all downside from their point of view.

Given DL management's prior DHS-cheerleading ways, the airline's paying up to four million dollars this summer for the TSA mess is a drop in the bucket and too little too late.

The airlines could have lobbied big time against the TSA's strip search machines, the boarding pass/ID checks, the PreCheck nonsense of all free animals are equal but some free animals are more equal than other free animals, and so on. But did they? Not so much, and certainly not enough.

The airlines have gotten the TSA meltdown which the airlines deserved.

I lean towards agreeing that the airlines/airports enabled and helped TSA in causing the cuurent problems travelers face but feel it's real sad that the public are the ones paying for these acts. The airlines should suffer a severe penalty that the public could extract by not flying.