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Taking a industrial flight from a U.S. airport usually requires a boarding cross to get anyplace close to a gate, safety screening managed by the federal authorities and cautious consideration to the contents of carry-on luggage.
It wasn’t all the time this fashion. Travelers as soon as handed by way of safety checkpoints staffed by non-public contractors chosen by airways. Full-sized bottles of shampoo and cans of shaving cream didn’t get tossed for exceeding liquid limits. Friends and kinfolk might accompany departing passengers and change goodbye hugs at boarding time.
The safety system and screening procedures air vacationers encounter at present had been constructed layer by layer, usually after assaults or tried assaults uncovered new vulnerabilities — from bombs hidden in baggage to hijackers who turned airplanes into weapons.
“Attacks on aviation have an impact much greater than attacks on anything else because aviation commands the attention of the world as the thing that links the world,” mentioned Mary Schiavo, an aviation catastrophe legal professional.
As the twenty fifth anniversary of 9/11 nears, right here’s how these assaults, the sooner bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and subsequent plots formed airline and airport safety.
9/11 requires authorities to contemplate plane hijackings in new methods
No single day modified air journey extra dramatically than Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 al-Qaida hijackers commandeered 4 industrial airplanes, crashed two into New York’s World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and one other in a Pennsylvania subject.
Before then, authorities presumed plane hijackers would search to barter, not intentionally crash a airplane as a part of an assault, in line with Schiavo, who served because the U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector normal from 1990 to 1996.
“The focus at the time, generally, was not on suicide attackers,” she mentioned.
U.S. officers launched modifications earlier than the 9/11 Commission recognized systemic failures and missed warning indicators that allowed the plot to proceed.
The Federal Aviation Administration instantly restricted gate entry at airports to ticketed passengers and banned knives and field cutters from carry-on luggage. The hijackers used small knives to threaten passengers, assault crew members and seize the planes.
Congress created the Transportation Security Administration, shifting duty for screening passengers, baggage and different cargo to a federal workforce. The identical November 2001 regulation required bolstered cockpit doorways, extra federal air marshals on flights and 100% of checked baggage to bear screening for explosives.
With screening instances and contours getting longer, TSA seemed for tactics to maneuver pre-vetted vacationers by way of extra effectively, mentioned Sheldon Jacobson, a University of Illinois professor whose analysis on risk-based screening contributed to the design of TSA PreCheck.
TSA more and more used watchlist checks, voluntary background investigations and different info to kind passengers primarily based on assessed threat. Travelers chosen for added scrutiny confronted extra intensive checks. Civil liberties advocates warned that opaque choice standards and inaccurate watch lists would encourage discriminatory profiling primarily based on race or faith.
The vary of safety flaws that 9/11 bared got here after authorities and the aviation trade spent greater than a decade making an attempt to handle gaps that earlier assaults delivered to gentle.
A bombing excessive above Scotland places a highlight on checked luggage and hidden explosives
Almost 13 years earlier than 9/11, a bomb destroyed a jumbo jet operated by a U.S. airline because it flew at 31,000 toes over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 people on the ground. Investigators determined an explosive device hidden in a radio-cassette player had been inside a suitcase that was checked in Malta and ultimately transferred to Pan Am Flight 103 without an accompanying passenger.
The Dec. 21, 1988, attack on the London-to-New York flight “stimulated the most significant changes in aviation security since the early 1970s,” former FAA Administrator Jane Garvey told the 9/11 Commission in 2003.
The FAA ordered U.S. carriers at airports in Europe and the Middle East to X-ray or physically search all checked baggage, to conduct additional random checks, and to confirm that checked bags belonged to flying passengers.
Acting on recommendations from a presidential commission and legislation passed by Congress, the FAA assigned security personnel at major U.S. and foreign airports, established intelligence-sharing agreements, instituted tighter cargo controls, developed training standards for private screeners and researched explosives-detection and mitigation technology.
The FAA also covertly tested airport and airline security systems by assigning a team “to simulate the criminal and terrorist attacker modus operandi,” Garvey testified. On Sept. 10, 2001, the agency saw attacks with explosive devices as the most dangerous threat to an airliner and the people on it, she told the 9/11 Commission.
“The challenge is not formulating attack scenarios,” Garvey said. “The challenge is figuring out how best to allocate finite resources in an environment of uncertainty.”
Footwear and beverage bottles emerge as security concerns in the wake of foiled bomb plots
Three months and 11 days after 9/11, Richard Reid boarded American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes. The British man tried to ignite them midflight but struggled to light the fuse before other passengers and crew members subdued him.
TSA and airlines asked passengers after the Dec. 22, 2001, incident to remove their shoes voluntarily during security screening. Shoe removal became mandatory less than five years later, when TSA also restricted outside liquids and gels on commercial planes.
The changes came after British authorities announced they had disrupted a plot to use liquid explosives concealed in beverage bottles to destroy seven transatlantic airliners. Authorities alleged the plotters planned to assemble and detonate devices in suicide attacks. Six men ultimately were convicted —
TSA immediately banned nearly all liquids, gels and aerosols from remaining with travelers beyond security screening. The agency soon replaced the prohibition with the “3-1-1” rule that limits passengers to containers of 3.4 ounces or less that must fit in a single quart-sized, clear plastic bag.
In July 2025, the Trump administration ended the shoe screening requirement that sent passengers shuffling through security barefoot or in socks.
The so-called “underwear bomber” accelerates the rollout of body scanners
On Christmas Day 2009, a passenger on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear as the plane approached Detroit. The device failed but caused a fire, and the passenger — who identified himself as a Yemen-trained member of al-Qaida — was severely burned. The young man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, later pleaded guilty to attempting to destroy the aircraft.
The traditional metal detectors in use at the time could not detect the plastic explosives under Abdulmutallab’s clothes. TSA already was testing full-body scanners at some U.S. airports, and the averted disaster persuaded authorities to fast-track the technology.
The radio wave scanners check for a wide range of prohibited items. Stepping inside one with feet apart and hands raised overhead now is a familiar ritual for most travelers.
Aviation security continues to evolve with new technology and equipment
Security screening still is evolving at U.S. airports. TSA has been expanding facial recognition technology to verify passengers’ identities. As of last month, newly manufactured passenger airplanes must have a retractable security gate between the cabin and flight deck to protect the cockpit when its reinforced main door is open. The Air Line Pilots Association wants the secondary barriers added to existing aircraft.
“Any one layer of security can be breached,” Jacobson said, “but collectively, when you put them on top of each other, what you end up with is a very resilient system.”
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