Being at the airport can be stressful. Other passengers rush left and right, gates can change, and sometimes it takes forever to get through security. For a long time, having to take off your shoes didn’t exactly make it faster, but now the TSA has scrapped the rule. But do you know why you actually had to take off your shoes? The answer has a dark backstory.
And for years, millions of air travelers had to perform the same ritual, which many probably found frustrating. At the security check, you had to take off your shoes, place them in a plastic tray, and walk through security in your socks.
It became such a familiar part of flying that many likely stopped questioning it, or didn’t think about why it was applied in the first place.
But the rule actually had a disturbing origin, dating back to an attempted terrorist attack that could have ended in disaster.
It all goes back to December 22, 2001, just months after 9/11. A British man named Richard Reid boarded American Airlines Flight 63, traveling from Paris to Miami, with explosives hidden inside his shoes.
According to the FBI website, during the flight, Reid attempted to detonate the explosives hidden inside his shoes. However, he struggled to light the fuse, alerting crew members and passengers, who restrained him.
The plane was diverted to Logan International Airport in Boston, where Massachusetts State Police officers took Reid into custody. He later told FBI agents that he had made the shoes himself.
The 2001 incident that changed airport security forever
On October 4, 2002, Reid pleaded guilty to eight terrorism-related charges. He was subsequently sentenced to life in federal prison.
The FBI also shared an image of the shoes Reid, who became known as the “shoe bomber,” tried to detonate. According to FBI bomb technicians, the shoes contained approximately 10 ounces of explosive material.
The potential consequences were horrifying. An FBI bomb expert determined that the device could have blown a hole in the aircraft and caused it to crash had it detonated.
“During a preliminary hearing, an FBI agent revealed how dangerous the homemade bomb was. She said that bomb techs determined that the bomb would have blown a hole in the plane’s fuselage and caused the plane to crash if it had detonated,” the FBI wrote.
Following the attempted attack, airport security procedures changed. Passengers were asked to remove their footwear during security checks, but the requirement was not immediately introduced nationwide.
Changed airport security for millions
However, in August 2006, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officially made shoe removal mandatory at US airport checkpoints, per USA Today.
From that moment on, all passengers were expected to remove their shoes and place them on the conveyor belt for X-ray screening. While it was a big change, it also led to a lot of frustration, especially for those with children.
Moreover, older passengers struggled to put their shoes back on, and travelers in a hurry found themselves juggling bags, jackets and shoes while trying to get through security.
There were exceptions, however. Members of the TSA PreCheck program, for example, were generally allowed to keep their shoes on.
Now, after nearly two decades, airport security in the United States has finally changed its approach, and passengers can once again keep their shoes on in most cases.
In July 2025, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced a major change to airport security procedures, per ABC News.
TSA scrapped rule of having to take off shoes in security check in 2025
Passengers were no longer required to remove their shoes when passing through a regular TSA security checkpoint. The change was made nationwide.
It marked the end of a requirement that had been in place for almost 20 years.
“There will be individuals at times that will be asked to remove their shoes, if we think there is additional layers of screening that is necessary that may still happen to an individual,” Noem said at a news conference in July last year.
She continued, “But we are excited with the fact that we have the technology now that we have the multi layers of screening in place that we’ve built in over the recent several years, they give us the ability to allow our travelers to keep their shoes on.”
According to Noem, advances in security technology and improved screening procedures mean passengers can keep their footwear on without compromising airport safety.
Exepctions to when you still have to take off your shoes exist
However, the rule change does not mean that nobody will ever be asked to remove their shoes again. Passengers who trigger an alarm or require additional screening may still be asked to take them off.
The change applies to US airports and does not automatically mean that the same rules apply in other countries.
For millions of travelers, though, one of the most familiar and frustrating parts of flying has finally become a thing of the past.
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