The Inefficiency of Airline Security

3611 Words8 Pages

Everyone who has gotten out of bed in the morning has been exposed to risks. Whether it be risks from the factors around them, from themselves, or from people around them, they have faced some kind of risk. Comparatively, risks presented by situations around them and by themselves are considerably controllable. The risks delivered by people around them, however, are the ones that tend to be the most formidable. When people have a determination to be destructive, they often select targets which will stir up the most attention. Attributable to the criteria terrorists search for, airlines are a common target for terrorist activities. One of the most memorable terrorist attacks revealed sizable gaps in the safety of airlines. Although airline security has been significantly improved since the events of 9/11, the safety measures have gone overboard in the wrong areas, focusing on airport safety rather than airline safety, and need to be ameliorated to add efficiency back to aviation security as a whole.

Airport pat downs are at the point where they are intrusive and uncomfortable to many airline passengers and need to be done away with. Transportation Security Officer (TSO), William Touzani notes, “A lot of passengers are offended when going through airports because they feel violated and degraded” (Touzani) The uproar of the public regarding such feelings of “violation” has not gone unnoticed. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents throw their arms up and counter the cries, revealing that the bottom line is that those “degrading” search methods are what is required from them. In the words of an anonymous former Newark Airport TSA screener, “Every time you read about a TSA horror story, it’s usually about a screener do...

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Hawley, Kip, and Nathan Means. Permanent Emergency: Inside the TSA and the Fight for the Future of American Security. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2011. Print.

Post Staff Report. "Former Newark Airport TSA Screener Says the Job Does Little to Keep Fliers safe." New York Post. NYP Holdings, Inc., 10 Mar. 2013. Web. 08 Sept. 2013.

Seidenstat, Paul, and Francis X. Splane. Protecting Airline Passengers in the Age of Terrorism. N.p.: Greenwood Group, n.d. Google Books. Google. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.

Smith, Patrick. "A Pilot’s View of Airport Security." Theworld.org. PRI's The World, 17 Nov. 2010. Web. 2 Sept. 2013.

Touzani, William. Screeners and Virgins: I'm Muslim, My Husband Is TSA. N.p.: n.p., 2011. Scribd. 3 Nov. 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.

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