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San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
TSA ends shoe removal rule at SFO and other major airports
In a significant shift to a post-9/11 security measure, the Transportation Security Administration will now allow passengers to keep their shoes on during general security screenings at many major airports across the United States — including San Francisco International Airport. A memo distributed to TSA officers nationwide last week outlined the policy change. 'The new policy will allow all passengers to keep their shoes on in all screening lanes at many airports across the country,' it states. A spokesperson for SFO confirmed that the new procedures were in effect at the airport as of Tuesday morning. The update marks the end of a rule that has defined air travel for nearly two decades. The TSA began requiring passengers to remove their shoes in 2006, five years after Richard Reid attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his shoes aboard a transatlantic flight in December 2001. Until now, only travelers enrolled in TSA PreCheck were typically allowed to keep their shoes on. According to the memo, the agency plans to expand the policy to all U.S. airports soon. However, passengers whose footwear sets off alarms at scanners or magnetometers will still be asked to remove their shoes for additional screening. 'TSA and DHS are always exploring new and innovative ways to enhance the passenger experience and our strong security posture,' TSA public affairs said in a statement. 'Any potential updates to our security process will be issued through official channels.' The White House Press Secretary called the change 'big news' in a post on the social platform X, sharing the report from the Department of Homeland Security.
Chicago Tribune
5 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: TSA gives ‘shoes off' policy the boot
Walking in stocking feet across a grimy airport as you make your way through security was the reality for many travelers for years. And if you happened to show up to security in sandals … well, we shudder to think. But last week, the Transportation Security Administration ditched its 'shoes off' rule. Good riddance. An irritant of modern life has been lifted. That doesn't happen very often. Reducing security wait times — and, frankly, improving hygiene — is a good thing, and we're pleased to hear it. Nobody will miss the sights and smells that accompanied this security protocol. Of course, we understand that post-9/11, everything changed when it came to keeping travelers safe. It was implemented after the attempted 2001 shoe bombing, in which Richard Reid, a British citizen and self-proclaimed follower of al-Qaida, attempted to detonate explosives midflight from Paris to Miami. Some countries introduced similar checks, though few maintained them as long as the U.S. Still, the 'shoes off' policy is a legacy of early 2000s security thinking. The threat of a shoe bomb, while real in the early 2000s, is so low risk as to be negligible. Security agencies have adjusted priorities toward other, more sophisticated threats. Plus, programs like TSA PreCheck already allow vetted travelers to keep shoes on — and they've demonstrated that it's possible to maintain strong security standards without this requirement. We hope that an end to stuffing our footwear into bins for the X-ray machine signals more progress to come in bringing the U.S. closer to how other airports around the globe operate. Modern airport scanners (like advanced CT scanners and millimeter wave scanners) can now detect threats without requiring passengers to remove shoes. These machines provide detailed 3D images and can spot anomalies inside shoes, laptops and even liquids. For the TSA, there are many examples of how to improve processes. The Netherlands uses CT scanners for screenings, allowing passengers to leave laptops and liquids in their bags. They also leverage centralized security checkpoints instead of TSA-style gate-by-gate screening, reducing redundancy and congestion. In the U.K., airports like Heathrow and Manchester are deploying 3D imaging CT scanners, too, eliminating the 100-milliliter liquid limit and need for laptop removal. And in Sweden, airports are adopting biometric gates and remote baggage screening. The TSA is starting to adopt many of these more modern approaches. In 2023, the agency announced it was investing $1.3 billion to roll out more CT scanners at airports, adding that this new technology could reduce wait times by as much as 50%, while also improving threat detection. O'Hare is among the larger airports in the U.S. that have been using advanced CT scanners since at least April 2023, according to Condé Nast Traveler. Increasing adoption of this scanning technology more widely is a good next step for U.S. travel security. We share the TSA's goal of safe travel, and understand that the threat from those who would seek to do harm remains high. Let's keep seeking ways to make the flying experience less miserable while preserving and enhancing security. It's doable. Shoes on, dignity intact, we can now step toward a future of air travel with fewer hassles — preferably through a CT scanner.
Fox News
11-07-2025
- Fox News
Inside the shoe bomb plot that changed airport security and why the rule is now ending
After nearly two decades of shuffling barefoot through airport security lines, American travelers can finally leave their shoes on. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this week ended one of the most visible post-9/11 security measures, a rule born following a failed act of terror in 2001, when a British national, Richard Reid, tried to ignite explosives hidden in his sneakers mid-flight. The attempted terror attack did not succeed, but it sparked a new era of airport screening that would see millions of passengers removing their shoes — until now. The policy's roots trace back to Dec. 22, 2001, when Reid, later dubbed the "Shoe Bomber," boarded American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami. Hidden in his black high-top sneakers were plastic explosives and a makeshift detonator. Reid attempted to light a fuse with matches mid-flight but was subdued by passengers and flight crew. The incident exposed a vulnerability in aviation security systems, particularly their inability to detect non-metallic threats like PETN, the explosive used in Reid's shoes. Jeff Price, an aviation security expert and professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, noted that security machinery at the time could not detect the types of explosives Reid used. "As far as shoe removal, the policy, I'm sure a lot of people know by now, started back in 2006, when it really dates back to 2001, when Richard Reid tried to blow up an airplane with a shoe bomb," Price said. "But it wasn't until 2006 that the policy would be implemented to remove the shoes. And that was really because the technology at the time couldn't detect the types of explosives that he used or that were in use at the time." In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and Reid's failed bombing attempt, airport security procedures rapidly evolved, but technology lagged behind the threat. Price said that early metal detectors "had a hard time detecting anything at the floor level" and "could never detect explosives." Shoe removal became the human workaround for what machines couldn't yet do. "For a long time, the idea was: if we can't see it, we'll have people take it off," said Price, who was the former assistant security director at Denver International Airport. "So that stuck with us for a long time and technologies have changed quite a bit since then." According to Price, the change came following the wide-scale adoption of millimeter wave imaging scanners. The machines are capable of detecting not just metal but also ceramics, plastics, liquids, and explosives, from head to toe. "The new millimeter wave imaging machines that have been deployed to most airports do a great job of detecting explosives, liquids, ceramics, plastics and also metallic objects," Price said. "They're from head to toe. They're not without fault — no system is. Every system's got false positives, and it's going to occasionally miss things. So, there's no perfect system. The question becomes: is it perfect enough? Or is it good enough to at least deter and hopefully detect the sort of item?" Millimeter wave technology began replacing traditional metal detectors in the late 2000s, he explained. "The deployments of millimeter waves continued to replace magnetometers all the way up until 2023–2024," Price said. "They're still going on. I think there's been about seven to eight hundred of those deployed by now and its amazing technology." For the millions of passengers who've grown used to juggling shoes, bins, and boarding passes, the reversal may feel like overdue relief, and it's likely to help speed things up. "I think it will," Price said of the potential to shorten wait times. "It's almost inevitable that it will because it takes time to take off your shoes, put your shoes back on. We have to sit down to do it most of the time and depending on the kind of shoes you have, there's boots or dress shoes, those are harder to get on and off. So I think inevitably it's going to speed up those times." Price cautioned that convenience should never outweigh caution. "Security is always about balance. It's about a balance between efficiency and security. We still got to keep the system moving, but we still have to provide a level of security that keeps the public as secure as possible," he said. "We'll never get to 100% security, because to do so, we'd have to quit flying!" "But we want to get to a point where we've got a high enough level of detection and deterrence that we don't experience incidents — or, and it's kind of odd to say, we don't experience enough incidents that it really starts to affect the system." Price suspected that DHS weighed the lack of recent incidents involving shoes as part of the decision. "They're finding the majority of prohibited items in people's pockets, or they're in their backpacks or laptop bags, purses or something like that," he said. "We're not finding them on people's ankles and so forth. That might have been a factor in this decision." Yet he maintained that random screening should continue to play a critical role in keeping travelers and TSA vigilant. "Just to keep people honest," he said. And while some critics dismiss the original shoe rule as "security theater," Price points to the value of deterrence. "Anybody that is completely dedicated and wants to be successful will probably be able to do it," he said. "Just like if somebody wanted to break in your house, they're probably going to be able to do it no matter how many security measures you deploy." "The goal though, is to make that level of deterrence so high that they don't go to your house. That they go somewhere else and try their criminal or terrorist acts. And that's really the goal of any security system is 'not on my watch.' Out of my house." TSA turned a corner on the mandate to remove shoes during security, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announcing on Tuesday the immediate end of the shoe-off requirement. Noem made the announcement about the nearly 20-year policy while at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., in a press conference late Tuesday afternoon. "In those 20 years since that policy was put in place, our security technology has changed dramatically. It's evolved. TSA has changed," she said at the presser. "We have a multi-layered, whole-of-government approach now to security and to the environment that people anticipate and experience when they come into an airport that has been honed and it's been hardened." She added, "We took a hard look at how TSA does its business, how it does its screening processes, and what we do to make people safe, but also provide some hospitality as well." The announcement was made in an effort to "make screening easier for passengers, improve traveler satisfaction and will reduce wait times," according to a TSA press release. Some passengers may still be subject to a search of their shoes "if they get put into a different situation or need additional layers of screening." Noem said the removal of liquids, coats and belts are also being evaluated, declaring that "the Golden Age of America is here." Fox News Digital reached out to DHS and TSA.
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Yahoo
TSA Just Made a Huge Change and It's Guaranteed to Make Airport Travel Easier
TSA Just Made a Huge Change and It's Guaranteed to Make Airport Travel Easier originally appeared on Parade. There are so many things to think about when you're planning for a vacation, particularly if you're traveling to your destination by air. Will you have to pay to check a bag? Do you have your passport? Did you remember to turn off the oven before you left for the airport? And, in some cases it's, "Should I just wear a pair of sandals to make sliding them off for airport security for the TSA shoe policy easier?" If that last question is a particular sticking point for you, there's some good news. TSA is making some changes to its airport security policy and maybe, just maybe, it will get travelers through those lanes faster. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 CBS News reports that shoe removal at airport security is being phased out across the country. While this won't apply to all airports immediately, the rollout is starting at the following locations: Baltimore/Washington International Airport, Fort Lauderdale International Airport, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, Portland International Airport, Philadelphia International Airport and Piedmont Triad International Airport in North mandatory shoe removal during airport security began in 2006, five years after Richard Reid, who was a passenger on a flight from Paris to Miami, hid explosives in his shoes and attempted to detonate them during the journey. There were ways to circumvent the TSA shoe policy, like if you were enrolled in TSA PreCheck. That's the program that "allows eligible travelers to expedite their security screening process at participating airports." It meant that passengers could keep things like shoes, belts and even light jackets on as they went through airport security. You could also keep your laptops and liquids in your carry-on bag without having to place them separately in a security bin. Sweet perks for the $75 - $85 application fee. The policy change comes just in time for summer travel, of which there's a lot. AAA anticipated 5.84 million people were to travel by air over this past Fourth of July. And that was just a single summer Just Made a Huge Change and It's Guaranteed to Make Airport Travel Easier first appeared on Parade on Jul 8, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 8, 2025, where it first appeared.
Atlantic
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
The End of Airport Shoe-Screening
Air travelers in America shall no more doff their chukkas, their wedges, their wingtips, their espadrilles, or their Mary Janes, according to a rule-change announced by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday. It's been more than two decades since the Transportation Security Administration started putting people's footwear through its scanners, after a man named Richard Reid tried and failed to detonate his high-top sneakers on a flight to Miami in December 2001. Indeed, the requirement has been in place so long that my adult children, who were born just before and after the September 11 attacks, didn't even know its rationale. Feeling the cold airline-terminal floor through socks has been, for them, a lifelong ritual—as fundamental to the experience of flight as narrow seats and insufficient overhead bins. The TSA's mandate to go shoeless, like the volume limit on toiletry items (to thwart the assembly of explosives from liquids) and the need to remove laptops from carry-on bags (to better examine them for hidden threats), came to give the mere appearance of vigilance: not security but security theater. From the start, it provided newly federalized and uniformed TSA agents with stuff to do at every moment, and government officials with the chance to embrace 'an abundance of caution,' a stock idea that can transform almost any inconvenience into leadership. Now, by closing the curtain on the shoe requirements, Noem has indulged in a rival form of spectacle: populism theater. Her new policy gives citizens something they actually want, and something that has until this point been reserved for upscale travelers who pay for premium airport-security-hopping services. But with this week's change, the system hasn't really been democratized so much as made indifferent. In this case, the fact of the TSA's doing less—and caring less—just happens to be helpful. In its earliest phase, the shoe-removal policy was applied haphazardly, showing up from time to time and terminal to terminal in response to ever-shifting, secret intelligence on terrorist threats tracked by the Department of Homeland Security. Where the new form of screening was in place, it served not only to avert future shoe bombs but also to speed up the queue. Metal detectors had been tuned to be more sensitive, and the metal shank inside the soles of many shoes, installed to provide support, often set them off. (In response, some major footwear brands, including Rockport and Timberland, rushed out lines of shoes with plastic shanks that were marketed as being ' security friendly.') By the summer of 2003, the policy had become more formalized; the TSA started 'strongly' recommending that all passengers everywhere remove their shoes, or else risk being subject to a secondary screening. Speaking to The New York Times, a TSA representative said this new approach would 'ensure that the experience you have in one airport is similar to the experience you have in another airport coast to coast.' Three years later, the policy of universal urging was made into a hard rule: Now your shoes had to come off, no matter what. Although footwear checks applied to all in principle, some individuals—especially those deemed suspicious on the basis of their looks, or who evinced anxiety —were getting more aggressive treatment from the screeners. The system seemed unfair for some, and also far too burdensome for everyone. Why couldn't some new and better form of scanner be invented, one that could spot a shoe explosive even as the wearer stood there? Would Americans be padding across the gross airport floors forever, just because of Richard Reid? Better technology should have been the answer. In the decade after 9/11, tech firms completely reinvented everyday life: Web search, broadband, mobile telephony, e-commerce, smartphones, social networking, and real-time document collaboration all became routine. Back in 2002, many travelers would not have had so much as a flip phone in their carry-ons; 10 years later, most were toting handheld supercomputers. Yet when it came to building new devices for screening shoes, very little was accomplished. DHS spent millions of dollars in an effort to buy or subcontract the development of next-generation scanners that could avert sole-borne risks in airports, to no avail. (During this time, airport screening's most significant innovation was the gray plastic bin into which you might hurl your pumps, boots, or loafers.) Shoe removal would 'be a part of air travel for the foreseeable future,' a TSA spokesperson somberly announced in 2012, after another four experimental scanners had failed in real-world testing. But a different way to solve the problem also started to emerge that summer: It turned out just to be money. The privately operated Clear service was launched in airports, giving travelers willing to pay a couple of hundred dollars a year and hand over their biometrics the ability to shortcut the screening line. And when the government's own pay-for-comfort airport-security service, TSA PreCheck, rolled out widely in 2013, enrollees could finally forgo the lingering inconvenience of taking off their shoes. PreCheck also let them keep their laptops packed and their toiletries inside their bags. For a time, airline flyers with elite status got special access to both PreCheck and Clear. This would be right in line with other trends of the early 2010s, when the VIP experience was being sold in a thousand different ways. Pay-to-play became a way of life. It's hard to remember anymore, but before ride-hailing apps were available for nearly everyone, private cars were associated with late-night talk-show guests and people being shuttled to airports directly after giving conference keynotes. The precursors to the modern smartphone, such as the BlackBerry, were originally made for important executives before everyone adopted the air of importance. Since then, the whole economy has shifted upmarket. Those with money can now buy online memberships that get them tables at restaurants or tickets to shows whenever they want. Even Disneyland lets you pay to skip ahead in line. Trading cash for the right to get through airport security with your shoes on prefigured all this and made it visible for everyone to see. Being in the TSA PreCheck queue not only gave you quick, shod access to the terminal; it also offered a perch from which to look down on the rabble nearby, stripped down to their socks and belt loops, presenting their shampoos and ointments, and unsheathing their electronics. What a bunch of losers, frequent fliers might think, before ascending to the airline club in their Lobbs or Louboutins. It's surely long past time to broaden out this special privilege and to stop demanding that every other person among the 1 billion annual air passengers in the United States take off their shoes because one guy tried to hide a bomb in his sneakers a quarter century ago. But the termination of the policy does not feel justified by any new development in science, technology, intelligence, or geopolitics. In announcing the change, Noem gave no satisfying explanation. She said only that it was enabled by the presence of 'multi-layers of screening,' new scanners, more personnel, and Real ID —a nationwide identification system that was ginned up by Congress 20 years ago and somehow still has not been fully implemented. By all appearances, the rule on shoes was not rescinded just because rescinding it happens to make sense. Rather, the change was made because the terror-hardened discipline of the millennium's beginning has finally, fully been replaced by nihilism. These days, you board a plane that might or might not be flight-worthy, regulated by a shrunken-down Federal Aviation Administration, routed by an air-traffic-control system undermined by neglect and disdain. The president blamed a fatal plane collision on diversity programs, while selling access to the White House in plain view. No one seems to care. But at least you'll be able to keep your shoes on before lifting off into America's sunset.
