A quarter-century after the Sept. 11 attacks transformed aviation security, U.S. travelers continue to face longer screening procedures, billions of dollars in annual security costs and an airline industry permanently altered by measures adopted in response to the hijackings.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
Twenty-five years after terrorists turned four commercial airliners into weapons on Sept. 11, 2001, the consequences continue to shape nearly every stage of American air travel, from the time passengers spend clearing airport security to the billions of dollars taxpayers spend each year maintaining the federal screening system.
The modern experience of flying — removing shoes and belts, restricting liquids, passing through sophisticated scanners and arriving at airports well before departure — emerged from an aviation security overhaul following the attacks. Those changes have provided layers of security that did not exist before 9/11, but they have also brought additional expense, longer trips and continuing questions about how efficiently the system operates, according to a detailed report by The Epoch Times.
One of the system’s vulnerabilities was demonstrated earlier this year during a 76-day partial shutdown affecting agencies within the Department of Homeland Security.
Transportation Security Administration employees continued reporting to work without receiving their regular pay, while overtime was discouraged and absenteeism increased.
Ha Nguyen McNeill, acting TSA administrator, told Congress in late March that the “cost of coming to work [was] becoming more untenable for the workforce.”
Daily TSA employee call-out rates climbed from 4% to 11%, while absenteeism exceeded 50% at some airports. McNeill said diminished staffing pushed security waits to “over four and a half hours at certain airports, raising major security risks and missed flights for passengers.”
San Francisco International Airport offered a stark contrast.
SFO participates in the federal Screening Partnership Program, which allows private contractors to conduct passenger screening under TSA regulations and oversight. Because those contractors operate under a different funding arrangement, their pay continued during the government shutdown.
“While we’ve seen and heard about the long security checkpoint lines over the last few weeks at major airports around the country, SFO is NOT experiencing this issue,” the airport announced on social media.
Its screening contractors were “being paid without interruption,” the airport said, and security operations were “operating as usual.”
More recently, SFO reported remarkably short waits. On Sept. 6, general security lines ranged from one to nine minutes, while passengers using TSA PreCheck waited between zero and four minutes.
Gary Leff, who runs the View from the Wing travel website, said the experience at San Francisco illustrates a broader structural problem with TSA.
“Instead of regulating security provided by others,” Leff said, the agency “largely regulates itself, which has led to a lack of accountability.”
TSA has faced questions about effectiveness for years, including results from covert testing in which so-called red teams attempted to move prohibited or dangerous objects through airport checkpoints.
“After a series of embarrassing disclosures about their failure rates detecting dangerous items at checkpoints [with] failure rates over 90 percent a decade ago, they simply stopped releasing information on their effectiveness publicly,” Leff said.
The federal airport-security system itself was born directly from the weaknesses exposed on Sept. 11.
Congress enacted the Aviation and Transportation Security Act in November 2001, establishing TSA and transferring responsibility for passenger screening at most U.S. airports to the federal government. The legislation also dramatically expanded the federal air marshal program, placing more armed undercover officers aboard commercial flights.
Maintaining TSA now costs taxpayers roughly $11 billion annually.
Leff questioned whether the resulting benefits justify the expense.
“It’s not clear what we’ve gotten spending over $10 billion annually,” he said.
Bill McGee, a senior fellow for aviation at the American Economic Liberties Project and a longtime critic of aspects of commercial aviation, said TSA deserves scrutiny but argued that the pre-9/11 alternative should not be forgotten.
“It’s really easy to beat up on the TSA, and I’ve done it quite often myself. In fact, there’s an entire chapter on TSA criticism in my book ‘Attention All Passengers,’” McGee said.
At the same time, he said, it is important to remember “what airline and airport security was like prior to 9/11,” when “security was the responsibility of the airlines, and it was often non-existent.”
“I think we can all agree that the airlines’ efforts in outsourcing airport security on 9/11 was a spectacular failure,” McGee said, adding that TSA’s creation reflected a determination “that aviation security is taken seriously enough that it’s the responsibility of the federal government.”
McGee said he would not want such a “vital function that is so intrinsic to national security be outsourced to the lowest bidders again.”
Rather than eliminate TSA, he said policymakers should focus on improving it.
“Let’s think instead about how Congress can fix the TSA for all of us,” McGee said.
The debate over airport security represents only one part of the lasting aviation legacy of the attacks.
Immediately after 9/11, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded commercial flights across the United States for several days. When operations resumed, many passengers remained reluctant to fly after repeatedly seeing images of hijacked passenger jets striking the World Trade Center.
The financial shock was severe.
U.S. passenger airlines had collectively earned profits of $2.2 billion in 2000. In 2001, they recorded losses of $8 billion, and industry revenue did not return to its 2000 level until 2004.
Several carriers subsequently entered bankruptcy, including United Airlines and US Airways in 2002. United ultimately continued operating, while US Airways was eventually absorbed by American Airlines.
Willie Walsh, former director general of the International Air Transport Association, described the upheaval when the organization marked the 20th anniversary of the attacks.
“On September 11, 2001, the world changed forever,” Walsh said.
“Those of us old enough to understand what was happening at the time still remember where we were when we heard the horrific news. Indeed, for many, it probably still feels like yesterday.”
Walsh said the attacks were not only “assaults on the United States of America.” By using passenger aircraft as weapons, the terrorists also struck the “global air transportation system – a facilitator of peace and freedom.”
TSA PreCheck eventually emerged as one effort to make the post-9/11 security structure less burdensome. The program allows travelers who provide additional personal information and pay a fee to qualify for expedited screening.
Walsh viewed PreCheck as an important improvement.
He acknowledged that “extraordinary measures” were likely necessary to restart aviation after 9/11 but argued that security policies should evolve as risks and technology change.
He said airport security should eventually “move beyond the one-size-fits-all, rules-based model that still … governs passenger security screening” and establish “firm deadlines” for eliminating measures that are no longer necessary.
The objective, Walsh said, should be ensuring that “what we are doing is relevant.”
Leff has raised a different concern about the cumulative burden of post-9/11 aviation security: people may fly less because air travel takes longer.
“For travel, it’s meant that trips take longer. That means fewer trips by air than there’d otherwise be. It likely means more car trips, which are far less safe, and more loss of life as a result. But we never examine second- and third-order effects,” he said.
Transportation fatality figures illustrate the enormous difference between commercial aviation and road travel.
Last year, 64 people aboard a U.S. commercial airliner were killed, all in the Jan. 29 collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a commuter aircraft over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport. Three people aboard the helicopter were also killed.
American roads recorded 36,640 traffic deaths during the same period.
The security structure that followed 9/11 grew out of an attack unlike anything the domestic airline industry had previously experienced.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, 19 members of the al Qaeda Islamist terrorist network boarded four passenger jets departing from Boston, Newark, New Jersey, and northern Virginia.
After takeoff, the terrorists hijacked the aircraft.
Two planes were flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, where more than 2,700 people died.
American Airlines Flight 77, traveling from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles, was crashed into the Pentagon. The attack killed 189 people, including 125 inside the Pentagon, six crew members, 53 passengers and the five hijackers.
United Airlines Flight 93 had departed Newark for San Francisco when passengers and crew members, having learned what was happening aboard the other aircraft, fought back against the hijackers.
The Boeing 757 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, before reaching what the National Park Service has identified as its intended target, the U.S. Capitol.
All 44 people aboard Flight 93 died, including seven crew members, 33 passengers and four hijackers.
Beyond the security changes that followed, the attacks may also have altered the trajectory of aviation innovation.
Journalist and pilot James Fallows published “Free Flight: From Airline Hell to a New Age of Travel” only months before Sept. 11. He had envisioned advances in smaller aircraft eventually producing a more decentralized system in which air taxis could provide an alternative to conventional airline travel.
“So much has changed in the 25 years since the 9/11 attacks,” Fallows said.
For several years afterward, “dramatically tightened security rules limited private air travel of all sorts.”
But the industry eventually evolved in other directions.
“The increasing congestion of airlines, and the ongoing progress in aircraft and engine design, has led to steady growth in private jet travel—for those who can afford it,” Fallows said.
He said numerous companies are now attempting to develop an “air taxi model” that could eventually make smaller-scale private air transportation affordable to people beyond the wealthy travelers who currently dominate private aviation.
A quarter-century after Sept. 11, the American aviation system bears little resemblance to the one the hijackers encountered in 2001. Airport screening has become a federal responsibility, security procedures are built into the routine of commercial flying and enormous public resources are devoted to preventing another coordinated hijacking.
The trade-offs remain visible as well. Travelers spend additional time navigating checkpoints, taxpayers finance an agency costing roughly $11 billion annually, government shutdowns can disrupt screening and critics continue to debate whether every post-9/11 procedure remains necessary or effective.
What has never returned is the comparatively open system that existed before the attacks. Twenty-five years later, heightened security is no longer an emergency response to Sept. 11. It has become a permanent feature of flying in America.
Original article
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