After nearly two decades... In the U.S., the resounding turnaround on security checks: what will no longer have to be done

It has been almost 25 years since, December 22, 2001, just three months after the attack on the Twin Towers, Richard Reid attempted to detonate an explosive charge he had hidden in the soles of his shoes while the American Airlines jet on which he was traveling between Paris and Miami was over the Atlantic Ocean.

The other passengers managed to overpower and incapacitate him before the plane landed safely at Boston's Logan Airport. Since then Reid, a British citizen of Middle Eastern descent who was radicalized in Pakistan and Afghanistan, has been in a maximum-security prison in Colorado on three life sentences.

Since 2006, instead, for 'his fault,' passengers departing from all U.S. airports are required to remove their shoes during security screening and place them in the trays that pass under scanners like the rest of their carry-on luggage. Since 2011, the rule has been 'relaxed' in the sense that children as young as 12 years old and the elderly over 75 years old are allowed to wear shoes during checkups.

Now this procedure somewhat awkward for some and certainly adds stress (and time) to airport security procedures, has been eliminated. La Secretary of National Homeland Security Kristi Noem indeed announced at a press conference held at Washington's Ronald Reagan Airport that "from today, passengers departing from all U.S. airports will no longer be required to remove their shoes to security checks."

The secretary emphasized "the exceptional advances that technology has made in the past two decades, which make it possible to guarantee maximum security screening for passengers while wearing shoes" (as, moreover, is the case in all or most countries around the world). And he recalled the major events that will feature the United States in the coming years, the Olympics and the World Cup, "at which we want to ensure, yes, maximum security, but also offer American and foreign travelers the most pleasant travel experience possible.

Anticipating the news in the days leading up to Noem's announcement was the New York Times, which quoted the specialized website Gate Access as saying that at some U.S. airports, including La Guardia airport in New York, an experiment had begun in which passengers were allowed not to have to remove their shoes at security checkpoints.

The 'privilege' of keeping shoes on is one of the benefits of those enrolled in the federal PreCheck program, which generally guarantees faster security and immigration checks than other passengers.