Secure Flight

Secure Flight is an airline passenger pre-screening program, implemented from August 2009 by the United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Secure Flight matches passenger information against watch lists maintained by the federal government. The initial implementation phase of Secure Flight resulted in the complete transfer of responsibility for passenger watch list matching to TSA from aircraft operators whose flights operate within the United States. The second phase of Secure Flight will result in the transfer of responsibility for passenger watch list matching to TSA for flights into, out of, and over the United States.

Secure Flight will serve to prevent individuals on the No Fly List from boarding an aircraft, as well as to subject individuals on the Selectee List to enhanced screening to determine if they are permitted to board an aircraft.

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) of 2004 requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to assume from aircraft operators the function of conducting pre-flight comparisons of airline passenger information to federal government watch lists for international and domestic flights. The final report of the National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission Report) recommends that this watch list matching function “should be performed by TSA and it should utilize the larger set of watch lists maintained by the Federal Government” (See 9/11 Commission Report p. 393).

To fulfill this recommendation, TSA published the Secure Flight Final Rule on October 28, 2008. The Final Rule went into effect on December 29, 2008.

Currently, individual aircraft operators conduct watch list matching using lists provided by TSA. By assuming watch list matching responsibilities from the airlines, TSA will:

Secure Flight began implementation with select domestic aircraft operators at the beginning of 2009 and completed implementation for all covered domestic and international airlines in December 2010.

TSA's Office of Threat Assessment and Credentialing is the lead for the program. Contractors supporting the program have included IBM, Accenture, ESR, InfoZen, and Deloitte. Infoglide Software provided the underlying identity resolution technology.

TSA's met its goal to vet 100 percent of all domestic commercial flights by early 2010 and 100 percent of all international commercials flights by the end of 2010.

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