The United States does not have a security system; it has a system for bothering people

American airline passengers are coping with increased security and added airline hassles by flying less. In fact:

• Scheduled US passenger traffic on airlines dropped 5.5 percent
last year, and 3.1 percent worldwide, according to the International
Civil Aviation Organization.

• That decline was the largest on record.
 

It’s not just passengers who are impacted by the growing security
issue. It also has serious implications for the US airline industry, an
already shaky business that could lose even more travelers. Just a one
percent drop in demand would cost US airlines US$1 billion, analysts
say.
Increasingly, commentators are criticizing the TSA. 

Beth Kassab:

“We’re taking off our shoes, we’re putting our tiny toiletries in
clear bags and soon more of us will likely be going through full-body
scanners. And yet, we don’t feel any safer.”

Security breaches have been well-publicized.

Shlomo Dror, an Israeli air security expert, said after 9-11: “The
United States does not have a security system; it has a system for
bothering people.”
 

“Flying before 9/11 was already awful, and it has only become worse,” declared LA Times columnist Jonah Goldberg. 

He cited airline woes that even go beyond security such as “the
petty humiliations, the routine deceptions from airline employees
desperate to rid themselves of troublesome travelers (Oh, they can
definitely help you at the gate!), the stress-position seats, the
ever-changing rules for what can and cannot be in your carry-on, and
being charged for food that the Red Cross would condemn if it were
served at Gitmo.”

Columnist Kassab calls airline security “tenuous.” She labels the TSA protection “window dressing.”

Some passengers are increasingly saying security efforts are little more than “TSA Theater.”

The TSA says their inconsistency of what to expect at different
airports is deliberate. After the Detroit incident, the agency
immediately called for tightened security at several airports by
patting down passengers, rules that were quickly modified.

On their Web site, TSA.gov, they claim:

“Passengers should not expect to see the same thing at every
airport. TSA has a layered approach to security that allows us to surge
resources as needed on a daily basis.”
 

But increasingly, skeptics are saying the security agency’s answer
to safer skies — to increase the $2.50 fee all passengers pay on each
ticket — is clearly inadequate. Commentators say major reforms that
include new leadership are critical concerns.

Says Johnny Jet, a world traveler at his site:

“If I were the head of the TSA I would hire the folks who are in
charge of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and the security detail for El
Al, Israel’s national airline. These folks have it down.”
 

Source: David Wilkening; Travel Mole