End Shoe Removal at TSA Screening
Enough is enough.
As Americans head home from their holiday trips over the next few days, millions of people will engage in the filthy, humiliating ritual that has become a hallmark of the U.S. aviation experience since Richard “Shoe Bomber” Reid’s failed 2001 terrorist attack: removing their shoes at TSA screening. After walking through urine, dog shit, drug residue, gum, and countless disgusting liquids on their way to American airports, TSA agents will bark at said passengers to remove their shoes and put them in plastic bins1. Other passengers will then put their wallets and phones — maybe a child’s favorite stuffed toy? — in the same contaminated bins where E. coli-coated soles have just been sitting. Enough is enough.
Shoe removal needs to end. And not just for the people who spend nearly $100 and submit to a background check to avoid the indignity — for everyone. If there’s one thing we learned during the Covid pandemic, it’s that ritualistic, theatrical interventions — like outdoor mask mandates — diminish trust in government institutions and experts.
A Slate article published in 2022 suggested that shoe-scanning technology could facilitate the end of this disgusting, ridiculous practice, but we can actually end shoe removal right now. Other countries — just as vulnerable to terrorism as the United States — don’t scan shoes and don’t require shoe removal. They just let people keep them on.
Ironically, thousands of passengers currently in U.S. airspace hurtling toward our airports are already flying without shoe inspection, despite the fact this rule was enacted in response to an attempted to shoe bombing on an international flight from Paris to Miami. Because most other countries with direct flights to the U.S. don’t screen shoes at their airports, every single day passengers board massive planes in Paris, Tokyo, London, Rome, and Mexico City, and fly to New York, Miami, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, without putting their Reeboks through a luggage scanner. Meanwhile, passengers flying from Dallas to Denver and Philadelphia to Providence must remove their shoes. A reasonable heuristic is that, if well-governed European countries just as exposed to terrorism as the United States don’t require shoe removal, we shouldn’t either.2
There’s also a compelling argument to be made that inspecting low-risk shoes distracts TSA agents — who only have so much time and cognitive capacity — from focusing on higher-risk items. In 2015, the acting head of the TSA was reassigned after an investigation found agents were missing almost 100 percent of fake weapons at their checkpoints. TSA agents are also constantly failing to catch real guns and bullets. Does it make sense to keep burdening these overwhelmed individuals with sneakers and loafers?
Given shoe removal is an unnecessary security intervention and loathed by travelers, there’s a political opportunity here. Will Republicans or Democrats bite first? One could imagine Elon Musk’s DOGE recommending an end to sneaker screening as a strategy to to increase efficiency at airports. Are Democrats — whose political brand is increasingly toxic — going to let Donald Trump snatch this win and own liberating Americans from airport humiliation? The politicians perceived as responsible for ending this insanity will be lauded as heroes. Maybe this guy can even be recruited by TSA to sing a song telling everyone the good news.
Rarely, TSA agents will allow passengers to put their shoes directly on the conveyor belt, which is more hygienic than contaminating a bin. I’ve only experienced this once in Wisconsin. Usually, they yell at you to place them in a bin if you try to be a good citizen.
A potential compromise rule could be that if someone is wearing, say, thick black boots with six-inch soles, they would still need to be removed and screened. Most passengers don’t wear clubbing attire to airports.