Comment by CPLX
2 days ago
While I don't disagree and I think a lot of it is just nonsense security theater, it is probably worth noting that incidents of airline terrorism have fallen completely off the map in this new regime.
Not sure how old you are but bombings and hijackings of airplanes were just kind of a common fact of life when I was a kid and I was there on 9/11 as well.
There's at least some element of Chesterton's fence that could come into play here.
> Not sure how old you are but bombings and hijackings of airplanes were just kind of a common fact of life when I was a kid and I was there on 9/11 as well.
The period where hijackings were “common” (an exaggeration even then) ended around the time the first airline security screening requirements were adopted, about 30 years before 9/11 and (and just a little bit before I was born, and I am in my 50s.)
Airline bombings were NEVER common in the US (there are three I can find reference to, the most recent in 1962 and the others in 1933 and 1955.) They have been more of an issue internationally, but obviously US screening rules have done fuck-all about that, and they have continued.
Locking the cockpit doors and beaching the social contract that no one gets hurt in a hijacking stopped it, not TSA.
The trade-off here is that there's at least one instance where a protocol gap and a locked door led to intentional CFIT (Germanwings 9525)
The biggest difference to hijackings post 9/11 has nothing to do with pre-boarding security: Locking the cockpit door.