Author: Robby Berman / Source: Big Think
- 32.4% American travelers try to sneak forbidden items onboard.
- 87.7% of them succeed.
- It’s mostly about recreational drugs, but also about explosives, poisons, and infectious items.
If you travel by air these days, odds are your opinion of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents you meet on security lines aren’t exactly neutral.
They’re there to make us feel more secure on airplanes, and maybe even be more secure. But while they comfort some of us, they aggravate others, removing our shoes and exposing us to invasive backscatter X-rays while exhibiting all the warmth and compassion a $19.31-per-hour job elicits. (That’s the average; TSA agents start at $16.) Of course, in spring 2018 alone, the TSA screened over 72 million passengers, so that’s a lot of trays, bags, shoes, and semi-nude body pix to go through. There’s also some skepticism that we’re really all that much more secure for all of this.Stratos Jet Charters recently conducted a survey of people who’ve tried to sneak illicit materials past the TSA, after first ascertaining that about 32.4% of us have. The company surveyed 1,001 people about what they attempted to smuggle onboard and why. By the way, 87.7% of them were successful—not a ringing endorsement for our friends at the TSA. Stratos Jet Charters compiled the results of its survey as a series of often-disturbing visualizations called Protected: Sky-High Smuggling.
All infographics in this article are by Stratos Jet Charters
What’s being smuggled, and why? Mostly drugs, because.
Far and away, drugs make up the lion’s share of the stuff people surreptitiously get onto airplanes—counting grass, its cousins, and illegal prescription drugs, we’re talking 48% of what women secretly travel with, and 55.8% of what men smuggle aboard. For women, it’s about half and half, but for men, it’s very much mostly marijuana.
Next up is weapons and ammo, at a much lower 8.5% for females and 15.2% for males. Next up…
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