I'm remembering it happening earlier as well. I always assumed this 2001 incident immediately prompted the policy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_63_...

“They should feel relieved knowing that technology has advanced so significantly that T.S.A. officers can detect threats while wearing shoes,” he added. “In the old days, this wasn’t the case.”

S: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/travel/tsa-shoes-removal-...

Presumably what has changed is the equipment. The old equipment has trouble identifying things closer to the ground. I world assume the newer scanners do a better job of scanning things close to the ground. Of course the new scanners are several years old. So what has changed since then? The reality is none of this does anything. This was in another country but I recently had some thin wire in my carry on (it was heavy) that want allowed. But my power cords for my laptop was allowed. Alrighty then

Did you have terroristic looking feet?

One TSA agent sees me removing my lacrosse ball from my bag. He says “no that can stay in there”. I say no your scanners always stop me because of it. He replies “you will be fine” and I put it through in my luggage. I go through security and sure enough my bag is stopped. After they pull it out, swab it down like it’s contraband, they say I can go I say no, I’d like a supervisor. I ask the supervisor to bring the other agent over that told me it would be ok. Supervisor immediately sees the problem and begins to tell me ways to avoid the security theater including ignoring the agents and removing things that are constantly flagged. It makes both of our lives easier he said. Just made me wonder what the point of all of this was.

In the end he told me avoid lines with multiple TSA agents at a single station since they are in training and will stop almost everything. I smile, thank him for giving away all of their opsec and walk away shaking my head. It’s all a joke.

Pittsburgh barely cares about belts and shoes now. Little Rock is pretty lax too. Honestly, one shoe bomber didn't ever inspire copycats (because it was a dumb plot)

Security Theater works better is everyone is using the same script

The terrorists won.