High-altitude hi-jinks have entertained consumers since the debut of commercial aviation. At 35,000 feet, an airtight, airborne cabin often encases the fictional collision of crisis and comedy. Films such as Airplane!, Soul Plane, and Snakes on a Plane successfully lampoon otherwise potentially tense and tragic realities. The greatest fiction in aviation, however, is neither comedic nor cinematic. Instead, it is the façade known ironically as airport security. Today, its appearance of efficacy routinely fools the American traveler.

The crux of this deception is simple: today’s security checkpoints instill in flyers an image of safety greater than that which they provide. Certainly, it is never easy to quantify safety or to advocate a precise, proper amount of safety precautions. Nevertheless, recent studies highlight a broad discrepancy between the perceived and actual safety that airport security affords. On March 29th, an investigative team from Colorado’s 9News revealed that undercover security testers from the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) were able to successfully pass liquid explosives, improvised explosive devices, and even a “book bomb” through baggage checks at Denver International Airport. Most strikingly, 90% of the tested weapons passed through this inspection—and into the airport terminal—without incident. Moreover, in 2006, tests by the Department of Homeland Security found this same failure rate—90%—at fifteen other US airports. Together, these results suggest a shocking, systematic trend of security failure at American airports.

Apart from the initial shock, however, a failure rate of 90% is not very noteworthy per se. Because no security system is flawless, critiquing a specific failure rate, without a basis for comparison, may appear arbitrary. Who knows, perhaps catching 10% of concealed weapons may be an admirable success by some standard. What is disturbing, however, is that the reality of these numbers comes as a surprise. Moreover, these data arrive from independent investigations and not the TSA itself, which has remained silent on its own failures. Indeed, it appears the TSA has no history or intention of honestly portraying the level of actual security it provides. TSA Security Director Earl Morris offers the excuse that "our intent is not to educate the public on how we do tests and what our tests consist of,” for fear of exploitation by terrorists. However, Morris cleverly dodges the real issue by conflating two similar, yet independent notions: the portrayal of security and the technical methods through which this security is delivered. While actual security schematics are understandably classified, it is unreasonable to assume that mere public acknowledgement of what is already accessible knowledge would increase the likelihood of terrorism. Conversely, by remaining silent, the TSA tacitly allows a charade of ostensible security measures to mislead a multitude of impressionable, innocent travelers into thinking that they are safe.

Consider the airport’s impression on today’s average traveler. She checks her large luggage, retrieves her ticket from a friendly digital kiosk, and receives her boarding pass from smiling airline rep. Then, she steps in line. Within a minute (or an hour), she is inundated with the sight of expensive, sophisticated machinery. Lights and buzzers go off. Shiny badges and shiny shoes gleam from the bodies of stern-looking screeners. A gloved inspector asks the traveler if she is carrying liquids in excess of the quantity-du-jour. She then takes off her shoes. To her left, an 80-year-old woman is being frisked from head to toe. The appearance of a thorough inspection is undeniable. Unfortunately, this appearance is only an appearance. Perhaps undercover investigator Bogdan Dzakovic described this display to 9News most aptly. "There's very little substance to [it],” he observes. “It's just security theater."

The gravest problem with this display is not merely unethical deception. Disinformation about current security inhibits any real possibility for improvement. The case is clear. First, in theory there will always exist the possibility of increasing the level of security. Put simply, a search can always be more thorough. Increased funding, training, staffing, and waiting are all obvious means of making searches more reliable. In the presence of tradeoffs such as these, security levels merely follow a function of the expressed demand for security. As flights appear less secure, more people express this demand by choosing not to fly according to one’s personal risk-aversion. In response, security measures increase until a tolerable equilibrium emerges. Take the US immediately after 9/11, in which period public risk aversion rose substantially. Government funding for security at US airports immediately surged in response. In Israel, risk aversion is notoriously high on account of the public’s frequent exposure to terrorism. Accordingly, Israeli airport security is often regarded as the most rigorous in the world.

Thus, the deleterious effect of diluting travelers’ risk perception is clear. On the whole, flyers today are tolerating riskier procedures than they realize. More people are flying, approving current security measures with their wallets. Instead of creating economic pressure for change, a deceived public greets the TSA with complacency for an inept status quo. The façade of competent security is a tragic act that must close. The airport should not be a theater in the war on terror.