The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is ending its decades-long policy of having passengers take off their shoes at airport security checkpoints, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Tuesday.
Noem, in confirming recent media reports about the development, announced the policy reversal at a news conference at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington.
“Today, we have started a new no-shoes policy” with the TSA, Noem said.
For more than 20 years, passengers have been mandated to take off their shoes to screen for explosives, the rule coming after a British passenger, Richard Reid, attempted to detonate explosives tucked into his shoes in a 2001 incident on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami….