Originally Posted by
mikeef
It tells me that you have touched upon one of the most important but overlooked issues with security: the next attack will not come on a plane. That one's done. Blowing up an aircraft would be a tragedy of immense proportions, but would not lead to the catastrophic losses that we saw on 9/11. And passengers are never going to let a hijacker take control of a plane again.
If we're talking about large scale disasters, the scenario that scares me is the guy who gets on a train with a suitcase full of explosives and sets them off under Penn Station.
And truthfully, neither of those situations scares me much, since they are so unlikely to occur.
Mike
I think you are on the right track.
If anyone wanted to use an airplane as a weapon I think it is still possible. The events at ATL of insiders bringing weapons right through TSA's 20 layers of security proves that there is no such thing as a sterile area. The items needed to take control of the cabin and then breech the cockpit door could just as easily be brought in.
Now for a more frightening possibility would be a small dirty nuke or for a bigger player an EMP weapon. Either one of those could really cause a problem even if only over a fairly small area.