Aviation Security and TSA Effectiveness Since 9/11
This paper examines how aviation security in the United States has evolved since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, with particular focus on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Drawing on statements from former TSA leadership, independent aviation security experts, congressional representatives, and a 2015 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the paper assesses whether the TSA has fulfilled its mandate to keep air travelers safe. Key issues explored include high employee turnover, inadequate training standards, the use of unqualified personnel at transportation checkpoints, and systemic failures identified through government oversight. The paper concludes that while no terrorist attacks have occurred on U.S. commercial aircraft since 9/11, significant structural and operational deficiencies within the TSA remain unresolved.
- Introduction: Aviation Security in the Post-9/11 Era: Overview of FAA mission and post-9/11 security context
- TSA Performance and Professional Standards: Expert and insider criticism of TSA screening failures
- Employee Turnover and the Cost of Attrition: High turnover rates and billion-dollar training waste
- TSA Training and Hiring Practices: Inadequate training and unprofessional hiring standards
- GAO Findings on Aviation Security: Congressional watchdog documents systemic TSA failures
- Conclusion: TSA remains a work in progress needing reform
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What makes this paper effective
- Draws on a range of credible voices — a former TSA administrator, a congressional representative, an independent aviation security consultant, and a federal watchdog agency — to build a multi-perspective critique.
- Uses direct quotations effectively to let primary sources carry the argument, lending credibility to each claim about TSA shortcomings.
- Grounds abstract criticism in concrete figures, such as the billion-dollar estimate of wasted training expenditure, making the argument tangible and persuasive.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the technique of synthesizing multiple secondary sources around a single evaluative question — whether the TSA is effective. Rather than summarizing sources individually, the writer weaves them together into a cumulative argument, each source adding a new dimension (leadership failure, employee morale, training gaps, and institutional oversight) to the central critique.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with the FAA's stated mission as a benchmark, then systematically tests that benchmark against evidence of TSA failures. It moves from high-level criticism by former leadership, to personnel-level problems (turnover and training), and finally to institutional findings by the GAO. A brief conclusion calls for reform and returns to the FAA mission as a standard yet to be met. The structure is thematic and cumulative rather than strictly chronological.
Introduction: Aviation Security in the Post-9/11 Era
How has aviation security improved since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001? What do reliable sources say about safety and security as of 2015? And how effective is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at keeping air travelers safe? This paper addresses those questions and, in particular, draws on a range of sources commenting on the quality — or lack thereof — displayed by TSA employees.
For most people who travel by air, screening at airports in 2015 is certainly more thorough than it was prior to 9/11, but continuing problems with the TSA are well documented. At the outset, it is worth reviewing the stated mission of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in terms of what the U.S. government wants the public to know: "Safety is our passion"; "Excellence is our promise"; "Integrity is our touchstone"; "People are our strength"; and "Innovation is our signature" (Federal Aviation Administration, 2014). Whether the FAA has lived up to this mission remains an open question. Although there have been terrorist acts — including so-called "lone wolf" attacks — on the ground since 9/11, no terrorist acts have taken place on board U.S. commercial aircraft during that period. Whether this is attributable to TSA competency or to other factors is a question worth examining.
TSA Performance and Professional Standards
"More than a decade after 9/11, it is a national embarrassment that our airport security system remains so hopelessly bureaucratic and disconnected from the people whom it is meant to protect… to eliminate risk from flying, we have made air travel an unending nightmare for U.S. passengers…" (Kip Hawley, former head of TSA).
Why is Kip Hawley speaking out after his three-and-a-half-year term as head of the TSA? In a Wall Street Journal article — well referenced in a post on TechDirt — he essentially admitted that the screening system is broken. Hawley also stated that the TSA's assigned job is to "manage risk" but "not to enforce regulations," apparently because he believes that "regulations are always playing catch-up because terrorists design their plots around the loopholes" (Tech Dirt, 2012).
Another prominent critic is Jeff Price, author of the book Practical Aviation Security and founder of a consultancy called Leading Edge Strategies. Price offers this assessment: "For airport security pre-9/11, the technology was 1970s. But post-9/11, it is the 1990s — but it is not yet in the 21st century" (Price, 2011).
Protecting passengers may have become a secondary priority for the TSA, based on personal testimony from former employees. Protecting its own image appears to come first, according to the available literature. For example, P. Jeffrey Black, a former U.S. Federal Air Marshal, became a whistleblower and asserted that some TSA officials were "above the law" (Jacobson, 2009). The Homeland Security Special Agent assigned to investigate Black after he came forward, Charles Maurer, reportedly attempted to force a UPS Store manager to hand over Black's private files. Maurer allegedly told the manager, "I don't need a subpoena, I have this badge. Now, get me the files" (Jacobson, p. 1).
Another example of the TSA's heavy-handedness involves Annie McKeehan, 62, who worked at four different East Coast airports and witnessed "security lapses, abuse of power and fiscal waste" (Jacobson, p. 1). McKeehan wrote a fictionalized book detailing abuses and incompetence within the TSA, and was just one month from publication when she was called in to face a TSA supervisor. She had written an email to a friend saying, "I have a plan" — meaning a plan for her personal future.
When called in, her supervisor had printed out the phrase "I have a plan" and interrogated her about what the plan was. "They had been monitoring my personal emails, the ones I'd sent from my home computer using a personal email account," McKeehan later said (Jacobson, p. 1).
Employee Turnover and the Cost of Attrition
Annie Jacobson reports that several agencies — including the U.S. House Judiciary Committee — had tried and failed to determine the TSA's true employee turnover rate. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the watchdog agency for the U.S. Congress, determined in 2005 that the Department of Homeland Security (under which the TSA operates) was losing employees at "twice the average for a Cabinet-level agency," though specific figures were not available (Jacobson, p. 2).
A clearer picture of the scale of attrition emerged from a TSA blog post. According to the blogger "Christopher," the TSA had employed "more than 110,000 employees" in total. At the time of writing, the agency's active workforce stood at 43,000 — implying that approximately 67,000 employees had left the agency (Jacobson, p. 2).
When considering that the average annual salary for a TSA employee was approximately $29,000 in 2008, it is little wonder so many chose to leave. The financial cost is also striking: if the TSA spent $40,000 to train each employee — a figure later reduced to between $15,000 and $20,000 — the cumulative waste is enormous. At the lower figure of $15,000 multiplied by 67,000 departing employees, the result is "more than a billion dollars" that vanished into "thin air," according to former Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin (Jacobson, p. 2).
Conclusion
There were additional flaws and failures of the TSA's system identified by the GAO, but it is clear that the TSA remains a work in progress in terms of providing adequate security for passengers. One proposed remedy, discussed in a TechDirt blog post, is that TSA officers should be given "more flexibility and rewards for initiatives," and more discretion "to interact with passengers and to work in looser teams throughout the airports" (Tech Dirt, 2012). It is evident that in order to fulfill the FAA's stated mission, significant and sustained reform of the TSA is still required.
Works Cited
Blackburn, M. (2012). The TSA Is Coming to a Highway Near You. Forbes. Retrieved August 20, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com.
Federal Aviation Administration. (2014). Mission. Retrieved August 21, 2015, from http://www.faa.gov.
Jacobson, A. (2009). Why Have 67,000 TSA Employees Left Their Jobs? PJ Media. Retrieved August 20, 2015, from http://pjmedia.com.
Price, J. (2011). Airport Security. Retrieved August 20, 2015, from http://www.flightglobal.com.
Tech Dirt. (2012). Former TSA Boss Admits Airport Screening is Broken. Retrieved August 21, 2015, from https://www.techdirt.com.
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