Lunch at the Labs

Terrorism using airplanes.

It seems to me that most of the measures being taken to thwart terrorism using airplanes are fighting yesterday's threats while greatly infringing the civil liberties of American citizens. IMO there is virtually no chance of a plane being hijacked and flown into a building again. This only worked the first time because all previous hijackers had just forced the plane down and held the passengers hostage. The fact that the crew and passengers on board the fourth plane on September 11 prevented it from crashing into a building (since some of the passengers already knew what the first three planes had done) implies to me that now that everyone knows about this, passengers and crew would act similarly again. Terrorists could still blow up an airplane, but this threat is a different order of magnitude and should not result in the same draconian infringement of civil liberties.

Furthermore the way to protect terrorists from taking control of a commercial airplane is to seal the cockpit doors so the bad guys cannot get in. Are there any valid arguments against this and why hasn't it been implemented? Why is there talk about arming pilots when this much simpler and less risky measure hasn't been done yet?

Posted by mjm at August 9, 2002 09:12 PM