As an out-of-state student, I take a lot of airplane flights. Last summer alone, I took no fewer than six international flights, each one seemingly longer and more uncomfortable than the last. Most recently, I flew down to Mexico for Spring Break, an ostensibly simple and pain-free journey. But increasingly, I find my air travel experience severely hindered by the Transportation Security Administration’s screening procedures. Poorly trained employees, inconsistent procedures, and money wasted on expensive but imperfect equipment are making air travel less convenient, but aren’t really making it any safer.
Flying to France, I decided to bring my toiletry bag in my carry-on so that I could brush my teeth and wipe errant eyeliner off my face after I inevitably passed out thirty minutes into the 8-hour trip. As I was instructed, I placed my travel toothpaste, mouthwash, make-up remover, and hand sanitizer into a little plastic baggy — as though this process somehow strips them of any harmful properties they might have if left simply to the confines of my cosmetics bag. A thin-lipped, severe-looking TSA official inspected my Ziploc, prodding it a few times before removing my tiny toothpaste and saying with a note of satisfaction that did not go unnoticed: “This is 4.1 ounces; the limit is 3. You can’t bring this.”
I stared at her incredulously as she removed it from my bag. “Well, enjoy it,” I said sourly. “It’s spearmint.”
“Oh, we just throw them away,” she shrugged, adding my precious toothpaste to a massive pile of lotions, lip glosses, and other tiny bottles and tubes.
If looks could kill, she’d have rued the day she confiscated my Colgate. She also threw away my bottle of Aquafina that I’d tried to sneak in buried beneath the books, magazines, and boxes of Dramamine in my purse — a trick that, disturbingly, works about three-fourths of the time.
It’s not that I’m unwilling to put up with a few mild inconveniences and lost tubes of toothpaste for the sake of national security. I’d stand in line for hours to have my belongings scanned and my body invasively patted down if it meant preventing a mid-air hijacking or a bombing. What’s irritating, though, is that the TSA’s procedures are reactionary rather than progressive: in attempting to prevent past attack strategies from being repeated, screening procedures become woefully inept at anticipating newer plans. What’s more, TSA spends thousands of dollars on new equipment like full body scanners that often malfunction, effectively mishandling a task that a human employee could perform with far greater accuracy — if properly trained — for about $10 an hour.
In 2001, Richard Colvin Reid, also known as Abdul Raheem, attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his shoes during a flight from Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris to Miami International Airport. Reid’s attempt failed miserably, but not because of any inventive security measure: upon seeing Reid fiddling with a match, a flight attendant reminded him that smoking was not allowed on the airplane at any time. When Reid continued his antics, the flight attendant noticed that he was attempting to light a fuse on a shoe that he’d removed and placed in his lap. He was subsequently subdued by the flight attendants and passengers who used seatbelts and headphones to restrain him while a doctor on board administered Valium. Reid has since received a life sentence in prison.
Since the infamous shoe bomb plot, TSA has insisted that all passengers remove their footwear to go through security screening. It’s comforting to think that, should someone be dumb enough to try the same trick again, TSA officials would supposedly discover the explosives in the scanning device. What’s less comforting is that the chances of anybody being stupid enough to try this exact same plan again, well aware of TSA’s procedures, is so tiny that it almost makes the inconvenience of removing shoes not worthwhile. And even less comforting is a January 2007 report that states that TSA screeners at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport missed more than 60 percent of bomb components smuggled in by undercover agents. Screeners at Denver overlooked explosives 90 percent of the time, and Los Angeles International missed the planted components about 75 percent of the time. (If you’re flying out of California, pick San Francisco: they only overlooked bomb bits 20 percent of the time.)
What’s more, anybody with the right documentation — counterfeit, stolen, real or not — can, in fact, board an airplane with firearms or explosives. In a late March article published in the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, journalist Chris Joyner notes that TSA officials allowed Jackson Mayor Frank Melton to carry his personal guns onboard flights despite rules explicitly forbidding firearms. Melton’s documents were genuine, but in March 2007, a couple passed a handgun through TSA security using fake documents at Los Angeles International Airport. In 2005, officials in New York seized 1,300 falsified badges from 35 different agencies being used to sneak forbidden items past TSA and into airports.
Despite these risks, air travel continues to be the safest form of transportation available to travelers today. Statistically, you are far more likely to die in a car accident on the way to the airport than you are to die in a plane crash. Nevertheless, the TSA needs to spend a little less time heckling passengers for their toiletries and a little more time adequately training their employees. When TSA can develop effective methods of catching terrorists and bombers, I’ll gladly sacrifice all the toothpaste I own.
Michelle Lamont is an Associate Editor for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at m.lamont@cavalierdaily.com.
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