Originally Posted by
TSORon
Sorry but no. Neither of those two measures provide an absolute guarantee that it won’t happen again. All they do is provide 2 additional layers that may be difficult to overcome, but no promises. And as for hardened cockpit doors, read below.
A valid point. There IS NO SUCH THING AS SAFE. So why does TSA continuously add more layers to an already-bloated and near-impractical system, violating peoples' Constitutional rights, causing pain, humiliation, and discomfort (and quite possibly, cancer clusters which may needlessly take hundreds of lives over time) to millions of travelers, and spending billions of dollars, in the pursuit of an impossible ideal?
Originally Posted by
TSORon
I disagree. Screeners prior to 9/11 were under-trained, under-paid, under-motivated, and did not have access to the intelligence venues and operational authority that the TSA has. The 9/11 Commission Report clearly states this. Would you like a link to it? It’s actually very interesting reading.
Doesn't your union contend that today's TSOs are also under-paid and under-motivated? And given the number of complaints addressed by re-training, doesn't it seem like they're under-trained today as well?
I'm not a frequent flier, but I remember security prior to 9/11, and in the 9 years between 9/11 and the implementation of the AIT/full-body-rubdown/podium interrogation methodology. It bears repeating, Ron: 9/11 was NOT a failure of airport screening. The weapons used by the hijackers were
permitted items under the rules of the day, so no matter how good or bad the screening may have been on that day, airport screening COULD NOT HAVE STOPPED 9/11.
Originally Posted by
TSORon
Also untrue. A gun in an airplane cabin be the initial starting point of explosive decompression, which neither a mall, bus, or train can be subject to. Additionally, a hardened cockpit door may not prevent a fired round from penetrating into the cockpit and killing the air crew, you know, the folks driving the plane. And while it may kill a bus driver or a train engineer, neither of those travel at 600mph 30,000 feet above the ground. A bus will stop, as will a train eventually, and the chances of folks surviving is pretty high. Not so with an aircraft. Nor are either likely to crash into a high-rise building and cause it to collapse killing everyone inside and those in the immediate vicinity.
It's big! It's up high! It moves fast! It's dangerous! Yada, yada, yada.
Sure, an airplane is a large and dangerous vehicle which has been used as a weapon of war many times in the past. And you certainly bring up a valid point about shooting through the door - assuming that the hardened cockpit doors won't stop a bullet, and assuming that a person with ill intent is able to bring a gun onto the plane (quite possible, considering your agency's abysmal record of allowing guns through the checkpoint that's supposed to be looking for them), assuming that the shooter is able to incapacitate the ENTIRE flight crew, and assuming the moment an evil-doer pulls the gun and starts shooting randomly into the flight deck, he's not tackled and beaten within an inch of his life by the other pax.
But aircraft are not likely to crash into buildings, either. You think an unpiloted plane will seek out a tall building and plow into it the way the 9/11 planes did? Hogwash! Those guys had to take piloting classes to learn how to fly the planes, and they were barely able to hit their marks. I suppose that if a bad guy took out the ENTIRE flight crew of a plane on approach to a major city airport like Laguardia or Reagan, the plane might fly itself into a populated neighborhood and kill a bunch of people. In NYC, it might even fly into a skyscraper, since there are a lot of them in a small area. But it's a crapshoot; you take out the ENTIRE flight crew, and the plane might crash someplace, or it might crash someplace else. Such an attack is so random and so difficult to predict casualty levels that it's an extremely unlikely attack vector.
And by the way, poking holes in an aircraft with bullets will not cause explosive decompression. The holes are too small; they're nothing but leaks in the pressure vessel. Over time, they would cause a loss of cabin pressure and require the plane to descend to breathable altitude, but they won't bring the plane down, and they won't kill the occupants (though the bullets might on their way out). Planes can still be landed even with rather large holes in them.
See here for an example, and it's a WAY larger hole than any bullet could ever make.