The requirement to remove shoes slows down the screening process and has long been a chief annoyance among air travelers.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will no longer require most travelers to remove their shoes at screening checkpoints in the nation’s airports, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Tuesday. In a press release, the agency said that improved screening techniques have made the requirement to remove shoes for screening obsolete.
A DHS statement announcing the policy change indicated it was expected to speed up the screening process. The policy change updates the requirement that virtually all passengers remove their shoes at the screening checkpoint. Some passengers whose shoes trigger alarms in screening equipment or who Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) determine will need to be removed in order to complete thorough screening may still be asked to take off their shoes at screening checkpoints.
It’s also worth noting that passengers could be asked to remove their shoes in the event of outages of certain screening equipment or in response to heightened security threats identified by DHS. These threats often drive incidental changes to screening procedures, but the exact nature of the threats is not widely shared with the public.
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The requirement to take off shoes during the screening process was implemented by the TSA in 2006 in response to a December 2001 bombing attempt of an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami. The attempted bomber on that flight, Richard Reid, had hidden plastic explosives in his shoes and successfully boarded the flight. His attempts were discovered by passengers during the flight, and the flight diverted to Boston. Reid is now serving multiple life sentences in a maximum-security prison in Colorado.
Copycat attempts to down airliners with explosive devices concealed in shoes were not widely uncovered, but the best way to screen shoes for explosives once the requirements were implemented was simply to put them through the same X-ray as carry-on baggage—thus the requirement to remove shoes for screening.
The requirement to remove shoes slows down the screening process and has long been a chief annoyance among air travelers. The TSA began slowly offering exemptions from the requirement to remove shoes, allowing pre-screened members of TSA PreCheck, children 12 and younger, and adults 75 years and older to keep their shoes on during screening.
Screening procedures have also improved since the shoes-off requirement was added in 2006. Screening devices for both passengers and bags have become more sophisticated, often able to detect the size and quantity of liquids without the need to remove them from carry-on bags, or foreign objects of most materials concealed on a person.
Airline passengers were not routinely screened prior to boarding aircraft until the early 1970s, after several high-profile hijackings. Aircraft bombings in the 1980s added additional security measures, but it was the 9/11 attacks that created the largest overhaul of the screening process, spurring the creation of both the DHS and the TSA. Those agencies drove immediate, lasting changes to the screening process, such as the closure of airport secure areas to all but ticketed passengers and restrictions on sharp instruments, and later, liquids, following a 2006 bombing attempt with incendiary liquids.
Biometrics and more stringent ID requirements, such as the long-delayed implementation of REAL ID have also piled on enhancements to the layers of security protecting air travel, ultimately allowing for the retirement of the shoes-off rule.
The TSA screened more than 900 million air travelers last year, and set a one-day record for the number of passengers screened on July 7 of this year. On that day, more than three million travelers were screened at the nation’s airport screening checkpoints.