Originally Posted by
Bart
I agree that it's not practical to have private passengers undergo screening. What's the impact if a private plane were to fly into another World Trade Center tower? What's the impact if a private plane were hijacked? What's the impact if a private airplane were blown up mid-air? These are the sort of things that need to be taken into account.
They have been taken into account. Remember the kid that ran a 172 into a building in Miami? It did almost no damage. People did take that accident and ramp it up some to see how much damage a larger plane would do.
You do remember the Empire State Building was hit by a plane as well? A B-25 bomber hit it in 1945. Very little damage was done.
The big thing with smaller aircraft is that most of the passengers are already known to the operator. There's very low risk involved as you don't have strangers boarding your aircraft. Heck, acouple of years ago, an undercover TV crew tried to hire a helicopter to fly around a major metropolitan area (I don't remember exactly which one) The FBO called the FBI, the FBI came and arrested them. They had a "white powder" with them. They were going to make a big story about how they flew around with this magic powder as a story to show how lax security was. Needless to say, they didn't air the story of them being turned into the FBI by an observant FBO operator.