But if all flights were completely unscreened? It wouldn't change what or when I fly.
I already board unscreened trains and busses quite often.
When commercial airliners crash, usually everyone on board dies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela_derailm...
It could almost certainly be extremely deadly if it happens. Man, these were the two main ones I recall - Spain has had some bad luck.
You blow up a bus, maybe no one really cares except the locals to the area where the bus blew up.
A plane cuts through many different social classes and nationalities, putting them all in one place and making a large amount of people imagine themselves as the potential victim.
What an odd comment.
It was a totally different experience versus being crammed into a flying bus.
Now compare the money your parents paid for your little vacations back then to a flight nowadays.
From 1973 on, hijacking’s dropped considerably. Since 2001 there have been no hijackings in the US.
Your comment is the odd one.
It's not a realistic risk to be concerned about... it's just not worth the hassle trying to mitigate something that is orders of magnitude less of a deal than other easier to mitigate risks.
Originally when the TSA was invented, airports were allowed to do their own security, TSA was optional. Now, airports that already have TSA are not allowed to provide their own security, it is mandatory they hire federal union employees.
WHY is it necessary for municipal airports to hire federal union employees? Airports know their own local risk factor and can adequately manage those employees. Airports want their passengers to have a good experience, so that they come back. This is why they pay big bucks for rennovations, why they have the bad-ok-good-better-best colored buttons in the restrooms and everything else.
The airport has virtually no control over the staff running security. They can't overschedule employees for busy times and holidays, they're beholden to what the TSA does.
And yeah, they do regular tests of the TSA to see how much contraband they can slip past security. TSA regularly fails these tests/audits.
The rest of the world does not deal with the level of security as american airports, and nobody else is having problems. US airports are still running at/above 9/11 security levels... why? In most countries you aren't required to take off your shoes or walk through anything more invasive than a simple metal detector.
1. Abolish the TSA. Allow local airports to hire and manage their own staff (currently not allowed) 2. Adjust minimum standards up and down based on current thread level (don't force people wearing flip flops to take off their shoes)
TSA was a huge mistake and is absolutely security theater. Every other country in the world does a better job of managing risk at airports than the US.
If you have money, you buy Pre+Clear+Global Entry. The "screening process" is nil (three simplistic questions for Global Entry).
That leaves the bag inspections - and I can tell you that at least for the Pre checkins, they're not exactly enforcing e.g. the weird liquid rules. (And there are plenty of articles showing they're not super-great at finding guns, easier)
And yet, it seems air traffic is mostly threatened by carriers & Boeing implementing cost savings to enrich execs.
Also, we did just fine pre-2001, and it's highly doubtful the TSA would've prevented 9/11. So, what exactly does it buy us, outside of an employment program that mostly enriches folks supplying TSA equipment?
Yes. Without hesitation, yes.
Americans learned a lesson on 9/11/01. Prior to that, almost all hijackings resulted in the eventual release of the passengers. No one had ever hijacked a plane in the US and flown it into a building before. There was no real reason to fight back if doing so put you at risk.
After 9/11/01, the default assumption to the hijacking of an American airliner can only be that everyone on board is going to die, along with an unknown number of people on the ground. That change in perspective significantly alters the likely outcome.
If someone tried to hijack an airliner in 2024 with a knife - or even a gun - I would be highly surprised if, at the end of the day, more injuries were caused by the attacker than from the scramble of people jumping on top of them to subdue them.
The problems TSA was nominally created to solve simply no longer exist. Screen luggage for explosive, maybe walk people through an x-ray if the airline wants that, and move on with life.