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TSA Needs Your Help
Opinion · November 18, 2002

You can leave your hat on at the airport. But as Phil Doherty discovered, you should also expect a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent to pull you aside when you do.

"It happens without fail whenever I wear my straw hat," says the contract engineer from Mechanicsville, N.Y. "When the hat's on, they give me the once-over. When it's not, they leave me alone."

Since its creation last year, the TSA has refused to answer specific questions about its screening criteria, arguing that if it told the traveling public what made someone look suspicious, it would tip off the terrorists.

Fair enough.

But Nov. 19 is the deadline for the government to switch from private security guards to new federal screeners. Some of the airports are already fully staffed with the new agents and have been for months. So it seems as good a time as any to judge their performance.

Although the TSA isn't talking about what triggers searches, travelers are. After more than a year of screening, passengers have noticed patterns that they believe are both arbitrary and ineffective. That's bad news for the government, which needs a credible screening system in order to do a reliable job of keeping our airports safe — a system that travelers can support, even if they don't fully understand it. Salvaging the TSA's credibility could be up to the travelers themselves, if the government would only ask them.

Here are a few examples of the resulting misunderstandings based on anecdotal reports:

• Senior citizens. On all but three of the past 24 flights taken by Karen Bryant, she has been "randomly" selected for a security check. "A coincidence?" asked the Mobile, Ala., grandmother. "I don't think so. They're choosing the single-most unlikely persons to search: Americans in the 50-plus category."
  
  
• First-class passengers. On a flight between Atlanta and Cincinnati, first-class passenger Echo Garrett was tagged by security and searched twice. An airline employee told her not to take the screening personally, because "we have to search one from first class." Garrett, a 5-foot-3-inch consultant from Marietta, Ga., was flabbergasted. "If you really want to stop potential terrorist attacks, why would you waste your one shot in first class on a petite, red-headed woman?" she wondered.
  
  
• Babies. My 6-month-old son, Aren, is a magnet for TSA screeners for reasons I can't explain. They've given his stroller a once-over on almost every flight I've been on this fall, as if they expect the little guy to be hiding a weapon of mass destruction in his diaper bag. Of course, there's nothing scientific about these anecdotes; certainly, every traveler who is stopped tends to feel singled out. But that's exactly why the government should reach out to travelers for help.

A model for a solution to passenger-screening problems might be found in the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, which created an oversight board of private-sector taxpayers and gave it the authority over certain operational plans and management matters.

The new board is helping overhaul the federal agency's image problem by addressing such issues as shoddy management, poor taxpayer service and abusive agents.

The taxpayers-turned-advisers are behind a number of positive changes, including a strengthened senior management team, a clearer accountability system within the agency and more modern business processes.

Although board Chairman Larry Levitan admitted in a report to Congress earlier this year that the agency still has far to go, the improvements can be seen as a testament to the board's effectiveness.

The IRS isn't the only "business" to go to its customers for assistance. Travel companies regularly do so, too.

United Airlines, for example, convenes a corporate advisory board made up of travel managers several times a year. Continental Airlines has three separate advisory boards, which include agents, travel managers and frequent fliers, respectively. The carrier's corporate advisory board is credited with creating a new premium-class seat that has received high marks for its user-friendliness and comfort. Other airlines meet with frequent fliers to discuss ways of making their businesses better.

Getting input from real travelers would help the TSA focus its efforts. A traveler advisory board would steer the new federal agency away from irrational screening behavior such as frisking passengers who wear straw hats. It would encourage the TSA to go after the real threats to safety rather than insult those of us who are harmless. The passengers on a traveler advisory board would stand to lose themselves if there's a hole in security, so they wouldn't be soft on screening — just sensible.

The TSA's current oversight board comprises U.S. Cabinet secretaries and representatives of intelligence and national security groups. There's no question that their advice is important. But theirs aren't the only voices worth listening to if airlines are to stop terrorists without alienating legitimate travelers.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.