The unmanageable laptop/electronics ban has now morphed into an even more absurdly unworkable regulation by imposing vague requirements in an unreasonably brief time (21 days) on pretty much everybody who flies directly here – 180 airlines from 105 countries with 280 non-stop international routes to the US - about 2,100 flights a day.

And yet, after all the dithering about demanding better security throughout the world, just a week ago, TSA failed 95% (sic) of its own red-team testing of screening at MSP, ranked just a few weeks ago by ACI as the best airport in North America in its size category. ACI and TSA need to have a little chat….

The plan was announced June 28, so as of today’s publication date, the rest of the world has about 10 days to “enhance overall passenger screening”, which includes electronic devices, security around aircraft and gates, and both new technology and more dogs. As one might imagine, there are more than just a few wee problems.

For starters, it’s an unfunded mandate … big costs, no money. But that’s a bit misleading, not to mention highly confusing, because the costs are being imposed not just on US carriers, but foreign governments, airports and airlines who want to come here, all of which changes from one country to the next, depending on who is responsible for staffing, training, passenger screening and questioning, oversight of aircraft security, and buying/maintaining the equipment – which is expensive and on-going (consumables for trace detection), and there is a significant delay for delivery – they are not piled up in the warehouse waiting for a Black Friday clearance sale. That fact alone means the TSA deadline is ludicrous… proper training for more dogs and handlers is 6-8 months minimum, if you can find them, and TSA appears to have forgotten about their much-touted RBS – Risk-Based Security at primarily the high-risk locations, rather than trying to cover everybody, everywhere, all the time.

Oh, did I mention jurisdictional and liability issues when, say, foreign airline #1 buys and maintains the equipment used by foreign airlines #2, #3 and airport #4 for screening, each using different policies and procedures, or done by country #5 or contractor #6 for all international departures to the US… and something bad happens? Most central checkpoints do all passenger screening, so the cost and operational staffing burden just for those US-direct flights most likely falls to each airline at some downstream location not designed for it, and not separated from the ones around to it. Welcome to very expensive and totally ineffective security chaos.

So, if TSA mandates that it be done, and industry cannot equip, recruit, train and staff those positions at a few hundred locations fast enough, why not fulfill the mission by posting fully trained TSA screeners? Perhaps because they can’t keep the US domestic posts fully trained and staffed either. It was reported in this space last month that during the past year, 4,833 employees left TSA – nearly 10%; while only 889 (1.8%) joined, leaving about an 8% hiring gap in just one year, and apparently this year remains on that negative trend. See paragraph 2 above regarding 95% failure rate. Perhaps it’s the current all-purpose government excuse – they are just too new in the job (Still?). However, most industry observers reject that explanation; for such an ill-conceived concept, we keep wondering what management was thinking, until we realized that this Administration never got that far.

(is a rim shot here redundant? Ba-da-boom.)