TSA to take over passenger prescreening from airlines

The Department of Homeland Security said last week it intends to implement two significant changes in its handling of air travel. First, the Transportation Security Administration will take over from the airlines the responsibility of checking passenger names against the government’s watch lists – the so-called “Secure Flight” program; and second, airlines operating international flights into or out of the U.S. will have to transmit passenger data from each flight at least 30 minutes prior to departure.


Homeland Security said that the point of both changes is to establish “a more consistent and uniform prescreening process,” since the advance passenger manifests from international fights would go through the same watchlist screening as the domestic passenger ID checks. The international requirement would enable Homeland Security to prevent suspicious passengers in advance from boarding a flight into or out of the U.S., “eliminating potential flight diversions due to watch list concerns.” Both changes were recommended by the 9/11 Commission. When TSA takes over the pre-screening of domestic passengers by comparing their names to government watchlists, it might also start to require more personal information to minimize the chance of a misidentification, DHS said. Specifically, it may want to know a passenger’s birth date and gender in addition to his/her name “This is particularly important for those individuals who have similar names to those on the watch lists, or passengers with common names,” DHS said. “Failure to provide the additional data elements may result in inconvenience.” TSA said it will seek public comment on requiring date of birth and gender information from all passengers. It also promised it would “not collect or use commercial data (e.g. bank and credit card data, for example) to conduct Secure Flight list matching.”


None of this will happen tomorrow. TSA said it would begin testing the program this fall, using data from airlines that volunteer to participate. And the way government operates, it could be many months before the changes take effect.