Presumably because the margin of safety for optimal aircraft operation is a lot thinner, and there's a high likelihood that a catastrophic failure results in everyone on board (usually several hundred people) dying.
In comparison, a regular train derailing (e.g. via a bomb, or whatever) isn't going to be as disastrous.
Edit: why the downvotes?
Because hundreds of lives are at stake, unlike (most) other contexts like screening college applications or work visa applications.
> That's not the real world. There have been white terrorists, christian terrorists, etc.
Are you saying terrorists happen at equal frequencies across all demographics? There have been Christian terrorists, yes, but those strike me as exceedingly rare compared to Muslim terrorists, for example.
Why would you ever stop and frisk a family? Has a terrorist attack ever been carried out by a couple with children in the history of the world? Or even just gender profiling - how many terrorist attacks are carried out by women vs. men? Men should be scrutinized much more frequently than women; it's simple statistics.
Depends on how you define "children". E.g. see https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/07/terror-attacks-the-inhum... but we're talking 15-year-olds, not 5-year-olds here (and note: 75% girls).
There is definitely an instance of a pregnant white woman trying to bring a bomb onto a plane (albeit unwittingly); see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindawi_affair
You are, of course, correct that the frequencies for the various things here are not uniform.
In the USA??? I think the opposite is true. How many terrorist attacks have you had on US soil this year, and how many of the perpetrators identified as Christian vs Muslim?
Are you aware that the person I replied to described a scenario where 100% of attacks came from one group, and 0% from the rest? He was just as wrong as the straw man of me that you constructed.
> There have been Christian terrorists, yes, but those strike me as exceedingly rare compared to Muslim terrorists, for example.
I bet I know why it strikes you that way. And it's not because of actual real-world statistics based on what's actually happening in America. Check the numbers on terror attacks in the US- you might be surprised at the Muslim / Christian breakdown.
> Has a terrorist attack ever been carried out by a couple with children in the history of the world?
Yes, they have. And if we start waving couples with children through the security line, then yes, we will see it much more.
> how many terrorist attacks are carried out by women vs. men?
Yes. And if that's how we decide to bias our security, then we'll see a lot more women terrorists.
There are a lot of things that terrorists could do, but don't, in spite of lots of discourse like yours suggesting it would be effective for them. Bruce Schneier held contests for such suggestions, in order to highlight security theater, but also serving to point out that it's not remotely practical to guard against all reasonable threats. Since we're limiting the threats guarded against anyway, it might be better to guard specifically against those that have been experienced, rather than strip-searching grandma ( https://nypost.com/2019/06/06/tsa-humiliated-grandma-with-st... ) out of a pretense that it could be anyone... anyone at all.
Why is airplane security different than other contexts?
> 100% of airplane terrorist attacks are carried out by people of X country (Xians), and 0% of airplane terrorist attacks are carried out by people from Y country
That's not the real world. There have been white terrorists, christian terrorists, etc. There have been muslim terrorists from most countries. Sometimes they don't look culturally muslim at a glance - maybe we should bring back Fumi-e?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumi-e
> I say profile the heck out of Xians. Stop and frisk 100% of Xians and 0% of Yians.
As an islamic terrorist, you just gave me a fantastic idea about how to beat your security. I won't go into detail, don't want to make it too easy in case some other terror group also figures out how to look like a WASP.