Imagine someone ploughing shortly after the start into the Super Bowl. Thats what REAL security nightmares are made of.

Even though, even that cant be fully prevented. Best example would be someone like Andreas Lubitz.

That could be the basis of the worst reality TV show ever! Or one of President Trump's economic programs. Or both.

The most important safety measure against this became mandatory procedure after 9/11: locking the cockpit doors. If the terrorists can't control the plane, they can't use it as a projectile weapon. No amount of killing passengers will give them this kind of access.

The reason why 9/11 was possible was because it had never happened. They could have added zero security measures, not even locking the cockpit door, and 9/11 still would probably not happen again. The reason is because before 9/11 the common wisdom was to let the hijackers do what they want. After 9/11 the common wisdom is the plane is going to be used to fly into a building.

But, locking the door is still a good common sense extra security measure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot

However, box cutters where the weapon of choice for 9/11 you could make spears on board the aircraft and manually kill everyone except the pilots with a few burley and well trained people. Which is the real problem, defensive safety measures cost a lot and switching targets is really cheap for terrorists.

Security has different dimensions. The point of TSA security is to avoid situations where a hostile party can breach the cockpit or disable the plane in the air. All of the security theatre, random searches, etc are all there to make airliners a less attractive target and try to keep terrorism scoped.

Protecting your life as a passenger is a secondary priority, which is accomplished by the random placement of air marshals. Someone planning to fashion ad-hoc spears out of plastic utensils or whatever must account for the presence of a guy with a gun as well as passengers fighting back.

So, are you saying a vigilant public and "a good guy with a gun" are the actual solutions? (And before the reader jumps to a conclusion about my relevant political positions, I'd estimate there's an 80% chance that you'd be wrong!)

Now, it's true sometimes passengers can be... "too vigilant..." There are plenty of stories of Muslims being kicked off of planes for no particular reason, but in the end, yes, I vote public education.

For the "stop a hijacker from flying into a building" scenario, the locked door is the control.

Don't forget, we already lost an aircraft because the door locks and a pilot had a death wish. So, even if you pay someone with a gun to be on board he could be a terrorist, so now you need two guys with guns...

The society freaks out N^2(3) number of deaths involved.

Oklahoma were 168 people. 9/11 were 3000. The response to 9/11 was way greater than Oklahoma*20. It was event that defined US politics for 2 decades lead to 2-4 wars (depending on definition).

And the news cycle have already forgotten San Bernadino, Charlie Hebdo and Paris is on the brink of falling out.

Even then, it was not the number of deaths so much as the loss of a monument that really stuck with people.

Security that works by simply creating a juicier target is obviously not security at all.

The real limitation seems to be a limited number of terrorists not a limited number of targets.

That there are other targets is obviously correct, but I do not feel it really addresses the point.

Attack on the airport also targets people who aren't native, often westerners which is both what these organizations often want and it ensures that it would much more widely reported than "a bus blew up in north eastern turkey" which maybe will get a headline for 2 hours.

Attack on an airport tells people see you aren't safe anywhere your "most secure" location with all that security isn't safe, we can get you anywhere any time, this helps to spread the fear both within the country and world wide.

Attack on an airport immediately triggers security lockdowns world wide which amplifies the financial cost of the attack globally.

Terrorism is often considerably more calculated than what people think, especially when it comes to high profile attacks.

Or ten people could do it. It's probably a lot easier to find ten recruits willing to load bombs onto buses and escape than to find one recruit willing to die by bringing a bomb onto a plane.

Being in a closed cabin at 30,000 feet means that the size of the explosion has to be a lot smaller than on the ground to have the same impact. Additionally, guns can lead to lead to 9/11 situations.

More importantly, TSA probably won't defend against a state level threat, but it keeps crazy people from doing ridiculous stuff. Take a look at this pre-security list of incidents: (remember, a lot less people flew back then)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings

There is no way not to have security on flights. The next step is making it much faster and more predictable to reduce overall travel time.

All he has to do is show it to everyone and he can direct the pilots to fly anywhere he wants. They may not do a 9/11, but they will all do what he says.

Some type of security will always be required at airports and probably eventually on high speed trains as well. Now we just need to figure out how to make it way faster and less invasive.

A 20 person commuter jet or a 900 seat Emirates Air flight from London to NYC?

http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/the-biggest/the-10-bigge...