If the TSA wants to expand its role into domestic law enforcement, it might want to start by mastering the job it was created to do.

TSA Let A Passenger Board A Plane With A Meat Cleaver…Maybe Focus On That?!

A passenger departing Portland International Airport (PDX) managed to pass through a TSA security checkpoint with a meat cleaver in a carry-on bag and then boarded a Delta Air Lines flight to Salt Lake City (SLC) before the item was discovered. Only after the passenger was on the aircraft did airline staff identify the cleaver as a hazardous item, triggering a response that included notifying authorities and forcing passengers to deplane so the aircraft and passengers could be re-screened.

Let that sink in. This was not a questionable shampoo bottle or a toothpaste tube that was 0.2 ounces too large. This was a meat cleaver…a large bladed object designed to chop through bone. And it made it through security and onto a commercial aircraft.

To Delta’s credit, once the cleaver was discovered, it did what any airline would have to do in 2025: stop everything, get everyone off the plane, and re-screen. That is disruptive, expensive, and miserable for passengers, but it is also the only rational response once you’ve acknowledged a serious security lapse. After all the violence we’ve seen this week, including what Nick Reiner did to his parents with a knife, the response was wholly proportionate.

Now, TSA says it is “investigating” how this happened and whether additional training or corrective action is needed. Lovely, but the broader point remains: the TSA’s core mission is to keep dangerous items out of passenger cabins, and it failed at that mission in a way that should not be possible. It is frankly mind-boggling that more than two decades after its creation and despite billions in annual spending, the TSA still cannot do the basics correctly.

And this is where the irony becomes almost too rich. We have seen the TSA increasingly involved in activities far outside the narrow lane most travelers associate with “airport security.” The agency has shown enthusiasm for partnerships and data-sharing arrangements that have little to do with preventing weapons from reaching a plane. Apparently, the TSA has ample time to collaborate, collect info, share, and assist other federal agencies…

…But it somehow does not have enough time to keep an obvious weapon from passing the checkpoint.

Not Unexpected, Still Unacceptable

There is a certain bureaucratic muscle memory at play here. It is always easier to expand the mission than to perfect the fundamentals. It is always easier to say “we are working with our partners” than to admit that a basic screening process broke down. Yet the public does not experience TSA’s “partnerships.” The public experiences the checkpoint. And what the public should take away from this incident is not reassurance, but discomfort and alarm.

The simplest question is the most damning: if a meat cleaver can make it through screening and onto a plane, what else can?

Actually, we know.

Security, at its best, is boring, repetitive, and unglamorous. It is attention to detail and screening that works consistently, not selectively. If TSA wants public confidence, it should focus on the tangible threats that can actually harm people in a sealed aluminum tube at 35,000 feet.

CONCLUSION

I’m glad the meat cleaver was discovered before the flight departed. But it should never have reached the cabin in the first place.

And until the TSA proves it can reliably keep weapons out of passenger cabins, it is hard to take seriously the idea that it should be devoting energy to anything beyond its core mission…

> Read More: Immigration Agents Are Using Domestic Flight Passenger Data To Aid Deportations

image: TSA

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