A Trump government scheme to replace federal transportation security agents with private security at United States airports has taken an embarrassing blow, with the announcement that one of the aviation hubs due to trial of the new approach has withdrawn from the programme.
Tampa International Airport in Florida said in late August 2026 that instead of joining the “TSA Gold+” pilot alongside Charleston Air Force Base and Des Moines airports, it would continue checkpoint screening with existing federal TSA officers.
The privatisation was proposed after a national budget dispute caused a prolonged federal government shutdown at the end of 2025, estimated by the US Travel Association to have cost the country’s travel and tourism sector €6 billion – money it could ill afford to lose amid a well-documented “Trump Slump” in the visitor economy.
For nearly 25 years, TSA has played a critical role in protecting travelers across the nation. Today, we continue strengthening security, improving the passenger experience, and deploying advanced technology for the future. pic.twitter.com/WkayF1SGQe
— TSA (@TSA) August 27, 2026
During the shutdown, essential federal employees are supposed to keep working without pay, but the extent of the impasse, which lasted 43 days and was the longest in US history, led to unpaid workers, including TSA agents, walking out. This, in turn, created mass transportation delays and disruption across the country.
The Gold+ scheme had the stated aim of avoiding any recurrence of those issues, and would have handed transport security oversight to a public-private partnership, with a new private workforce conducting airport screening operations, rather than federal TSA officers. Over 800 TSA job losses would have ensued at the Tampa hub alone if the scheme were implemented.
The airport’s abandonment of Gold+ is being interpreted by worker representatives, such as Tatishka Thomas, National Vice President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) District 5, as “a clear vote of confidence in the federal employees who currently perform this critical work.” AFGE had already challenged the programme in a lawsuit, requesting that details of the secretive plan be made public. Thomas said: “Ensuring the safety and security of the flying public is too important to contract out to the lowest bidder.”
Tampa airport CEO Michael Stephens explained that the U-turn is the result of careful and deliberate consideration of how Gold+ might improve the flow of traffic for long-term stability. But “ultimately, while the administrators expressed gratitude to TSA for attempting to provide an alternative,” it will not go ahead at Tampa now, he said.
The TSA will now attempt to implement a so-called “SPP System” (Screening Partnership Program) instead of Gold+. SPP consists of broadly similar policies to Gold+ but will be mandatory if the government gets its way. It is currently in place at 20 airports around the country, and the TSA wants to increase that ten-fold, arguing that SPP hubs such as San Francisco experienced far less disruption during the federal shutdown since their workers are paid through a private payroll.
