In response to 9/11, President George W. Bush created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), bringing the country’s myriad airport security protocols under one central authority. Two decades later, the results of this experiment are a complete disaster. The agency has not made air travel safer. The agency has merely made it costlier and more time-consuming to fly.
The TSA has some 58,000 employees and a budget of $11.8 billion for FY 2025. Its ever-changing screening process involves forcing passengers to wait in long lines, remove their shoes and sweaters, place their electronics in separate bins, and throw away liquids over a certain size (or to fork over a fee and personal information for TSA PreCheck). TSA agents riffle through luggage in search of contraband items and subject travelers to aggressive pat-downs of their genitals. Navigating these intrusive procedures often requires showing up to the airport much earlier than would otherwise be necessary, creating inefficiencies for the airlines and their customers. A Cornell University study suggests that some people choose to drive long distances rather than fly in order to avoid the headaches associated with airport security, which is both a financial loss for the airline industry and a net negative for safety—per mile traveled, car travel is much, much more dangerous than flying.
It would be one matter if these post-9/11 protocols were necessary to protect airplanes from hijackers. But study after study has shown the TSA is essentially engaged in security theater, making people feel safe without improving safety. Undercover tests of airport security checkpoints have demonstrated that TSA agents failed to catch weapons and explosives up to 95 percent of the time.
Moreover, reducing the number of knives on planes does not meaningfully contribute to airplane safety. The 9/11 terrorists were able to hijack the planes because they took control of the cockpits; that’s no longer possible, because airlines now require pilots to lock the doors. On balance, this one change has probably done more for passenger safety than a million genital pat-downs and confiscated cans of hair spray.
“We would be better off without a monolithic federal agency that controls all major aspects of aviation security,” wrote the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards in 2013. More than a decade later, that’s still true.
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