How 9/11 Changed Air Travel

Above, Godzilla at the 2001 Tokyo International Film Festival. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

One week from today, it will be 20 years since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S.

As the attacks were carried out by using airline planes as weapons, drastic security changes at the nation's airports were implemented and they are still with us today.

My first trip to Japan was a month later in late October 2001. At that time, the airports had National Guard soldiers stationed in the terminals. My mom told me that travelers had to be at the airport four hours before boarding. Well, that was unnecessary, as it turned out. So I spent over three hours in the United Airlines terminal at LAX bored stiff. LAX was almost like a ghost town in the terminal.

At least the rest of the trip went well (even despite getting a 24-hour flu bug while there) and I attended the Tokyo International Film Festival's premiere screening of Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.

Japan Today posted an article on how 9/11 changed air travel and how we have more security and less privacy.

They start it with:

DALLAS - Ask anyone old enough to remember travel before Sept 11, 2001, and you're likely to get a gauzy recollection of what flying was like.

There was security screening, but it wasn’t anywhere near as intrusive. There were no long checkpoint lines. Passengers and their families could walk right to the gate together, postponing goodbye hugs until the last possible moment. Overall, an airport experience meant far less stress.

That all ended when four hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

The worst terror attack on American soil led to increased and sometimes tension-filled security measures in airports across the world, aimed at preventing a repeat of that awful day. The cataclysm has also contributed to other changes large and small that have reshaped the airline industry — and, for consumers, made air travel more stressful than ever.

Two months after the attacks, President George W. Bush signed legislation creating the Transportation Security Administration, a force of federal airport screeners that replaced the private companies that airlines were hiring to handle security. The law required that all checked bags be screened, cockpit doors be reinforced, and more federal air marshals be put on flights.

There has not been another 9/11. Nothing even close. But after that day, flying changed forever.

To read more, go here.