Highly Inappropriate: TSA Proudly Commemorates Acts of Terrorism in Airports

by Gary Leff

In April I wrote about the TSA’s pride in its work displaying the New York skyline and declaring ‘Never Again’.

Yet they do seem to forget, because the TSA has a 95% failure rate detecting dangerous items through the checkpoint, it was a 91% rate a decade ago, over 20,000 TSA employees have been accused of misconduct (about half of them multiple times), screeners have manipulated the process to fondle attractive passengers and don’t have a very good track record when responding to a crisis.

But the next time you show up at the airport and hand over your drivers license to the document checker, they may just be working on their best Jack Nicholson impression.

Reader Scott who sent me the photo above in April, shared this one he captured at the TSA checkpoint in the Maui airport. Picture quality isn’t ideal, but while you have a right to photograph it’s often advisable to be discreet when you do, and I think it’s the message here that’s most relevant.

As Scott wrote to me, “It’s not often you see pictures of plane crashes proudly displayed in an airport.”

It’s also especially bizarre because positive bag matching has not been required for domestic flights for at least 6 years.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. So bags and passengers are no longer “matched”?
    A bag can now get on the plane without it’s owner doing the same?

  2. Positive bag matching is a stupid “security” measure anyway. It’s based on the assumption that people aren’t willing to commit suicide. Clearly, they are.

  4. @Rocky, I believe they won’t let you willingly check a bag for one flight and take another, but if you dont make it, they wont pull it off.

  5. As I recall, there’s a whole row of similarly horrific photos just past the security checkpoint in OGG. Wholely inappropriate, and the grammatical errors are embarrassing. Who authorized this display?

  6. @Patrick the dominant mode of terrorism has changed dramatically in that time. what little incremental value you get is vastly outweighed by incremental cost. of course that’s also true with liquids, shoes and other elements of security theater.
    @JJJ piece of cake to do.

  7. Dude, you are a republican. We all are republicans here. I come here to know how I can make money, even more money. Nothing but money. Steal money from babies and grandmas. Yumm yumm.

    I don’t come here to read about world’s problems. So enough TSA and start writing about barely legal loopholes.

    And there hasnt been a gratuitous post about sex for sometime. Miss those!

  8. @Patrick You cannot willing separate from your bag. So if you check a bag and don’t get on the flight, it will be pulled. However, if you change from FL1 to FL2, they can send your bag on either since you don’t know which route it actually took. Similarly, if they lose your bag, obviously it won’t have travelled with you and can be sent separately to your final destination. Make sense?

    P.S. I was just in OGG last week and there are like 5 of these! Pretty odd but everything about the airport was a little dingy. I would not class them as inappropriate/offensive though 😉

  9. Highly Inappropriate: TSA Proudly Commemorates Acts of Terrorism in Airports as a title is clickbait, and also inappropriate.

  10. More grabbing at low-hanging fruit by Gary. Sorry you were offended by history. Will you be taking on the FDNY next for painting American Flags and the number 343 on their trucks?

  12. So, a picture of the aftermath of a bomb (that killed 35 of my classmates), loaded on a plane where the TSA would have no authority even today. They’re trying to show that 1993 US security actually worked, to the point that terrorists had to perpetrate terror outside of the US and not here? Why did we need them, then?

  13. Imagine if a friend or family member of someone killed in Lockerbie goes on vacation to Maui & has to see this? There are already people who are nervous about flying. How does being subjected to this photo help any of them?

  14. What more proof do we need to show that fear is freedom’s greatest enemy and that the TSA thrives off the fear caused by terrorism? Disgusting, unnecessary and shameful on the TSA and airport’s part

  15. @Joseph as opposed to looping gifs of the towers coming down or photos of a smoldering ground zero?

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