Airport Shoe Screening
You are required to remove your shoes before you enter the walk-through metal detector. All types of footwear must be placed on the X-ray machine to be screened. If you do not comply with Security Officers, you will not be allowed to board your flight.
Disposable booties or slippers may be worn through the checkpoint to help protect your feet, but they must be disposed of prior to leaving the screening area.
Due to the Homeland Security threat level being raised to Orange for the U.S. aviation sector worldwide and red for flights from the U.K. to the U.S. we implemented new security procedures. This is critical to protect the world’s travelers who transit by air to and from the United States.
TSA instituted mandatory shoe screening as an additional security measure when the threat level for the aviation sector went to Orange, or high on Thursday, August 10, 2006. Screening shoes by x-ray is an effective method of identifying any type of anomalies including explosives. Our highly trained transportation security officers can see if a shoe has been tampered with when they view it on the X-ray equipment. By requiring all passengers to remove shoes for x-ray screening we increase both security and efficiency at the checkpoint.
Today improvised explosive devices are the number one threat that we guard against. More than 31,000 of our TSOs have received rigorous training in IED detection and are required to complete four hours a month of recurrent training to detect all forms of explosives. Training and technology are two layers in our systems approach to security in the airport. Other layers include: intelligence, behavior observation technique, random canine team searches, federal air marshals, federal flight deck officers and additional security measures both visible and invisible to the public. Each one of these layers alone is capable of stopping a terrorist attack. In combination their security value is multiplied, creating a much stronger, formidable system.
TSA wants to assure the traveling public that we are working aggressively to protect the traveling public against threats TSA expect and those TSA doesn’t expect.
