Closing the national security loophole in the skies

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jack Barry is the president of the Special Operations Association of America and a former U.S. Army Special Operations aviator, entrepreneur, and national security strategist dedicated to advancing the well-being and mission readiness of America’s special operations community.

November marks the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Transportation Security Administration, a direct response to the 9/11 attacks. The threat landscape TSA was built to fight has evolved, and the screening system meant to counter it hasn’t kept pace in some corners of American aviation.

TSA’s mission is simple: protect the nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce. In 2025, the agency screened a record 906.7 million passengers, according to congressional testimony delivered in January. In 2024, officers intercepted 6,678 firearms at checkpoints. The TSA system works at scale, every day, without notice until something goes wrong.

The threats facing air travel today are evolving. Nearly 80% of international human trafficking journeys pass through official border checkpoints, including airports. TSA has recognized this shift and now partners with the Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Lightning Initiative to train transportation workers to spot trafficking indicators.

A small but fast-growing category of “public charter” carriers, JSX, Aero, Contour and SkyWest Charter among them, sell tickets to the public, publish schedules, and fly passengers on regional jets seating up to 30 people, indistinguishable from a commercial airline. JSX alone now flies to roughly two dozen airports on a fleet of about 50 aircraft.

Many of these flights have been able to bypass the screening every other ticketed passenger in America goes through, opening up potential national security threats. These carriers operate under regulations that don’t always require TSA screening. And they typically depart from Fixed-Base Operators instead of commercial terminals, which haven’t required that same screening at all.

This is part of their business model. JSX co-founder and CEO Alex Wilcox described the appeal himself in July: “Under charter rules, we can access all public airports, not just the 500 airports that have TSA.” For JSX and similar carriers, that’s part of the pitch. These types of flights still aren’t subject to TSA’s standard screening requirement.

In North Texas, Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Protection task forces have begun using drug-sniffing dogs at JSX’s private terminal at Dallas Love Field, the same kind of searches long used in main commercial terminals. Last year, a JSX passenger was startled to see canine units at a private terminal: “You have canines here?” he reportedly asked officers, before agents seized $356,880 from his bags.

This traveler, however, was not charged with a crime. Nationally, roughly 90% of airport cash seizures result in no arrest at all, and a 2024 Justice Department inspector general report faulted the Drug Enforcement Administration’s own airport program for weak oversight and training. That criticism is fair. These cases don’t prove TSA screening would have stopped anything. What they prove is that federal law enforcement already treats FBOs as a place worth watching.

TSA has already started to close part of this gap. In January 2025, the agency finalized changes requiring Part 380 public charter operators to screen passengers and baggage even when departing from FBOs. The rule doesn’t cover Part 135 carriers, which include some of the same operators’ flights, and it exists only as regulation, not law. A regulation TSA wrote can be unwritten by TSA. A law cannot.

That is what the Safer Skies Act of 2025 (H.R. 2353), introduced by Reps. Nick Langworthy, Marc Veasey and Jack Bergman, would fix. The bill requires TSA to hold Part 135 and Part 380 operators running scheduled, ticketed service on aircraft with 10 or more seats to the same security standard as any other commercial airline. It has even drawn support from the Allied Pilots Association and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants.

Critics of expanding TSA’s footprint have a reasonable argument. There has not been a successful hijacking-style attack on U.S. aviation in over two decades, and airlines like Aero maintain their model is safe and simply follows a different regulation, not a lower standard.

This bill does not hand any agency broad new search powers. It simply requires that passengers on a scheduled, ticketed commercial flight go through security checks, the same as everyone else.

TSA’s record of screening nearly a billion passengers a year and catching thousands of firearms is real, and it deserves credit. But that record only covers the flights TSA already screens. TSA is working. But has the industry built a class of scheduled commercial flights that fall outside that record entirely?

Every American deserves to know that the skies above them, and the airport around them, follow the same standard, no matter which airline they fly or which terminal they walk through. The Safer Skies Act makes sure every passenger who buys a ticket and boards a scheduled flight is held to that standard.