nsx

I guess this is the financial price of your proposal: higher fares for everyone with the money going to insurers of last resort.

I don't believe in making the airlines fully responsible for preventing terrorist attacks if the government is going to hamstring them with laws and lawsuits. I say that the one making the rules (government) has the reponsibility when those rules let an attacker slip through.

Rigid legal rules end up prohibiting the airlines from using common sense and gut feelings. So while you might be able to fly an airline with lax screening, I wouldn't be able to fly one where airline employees can refuse to fly anyone that looks the slightest bit suspicious to them. Because those employees would be fired for violating travelers
civil rights. Civil rights have a price, and part of the price is increased risk. If government forces airlines to honor civil rights, government is responsible for the increased risk.

Personally, I don't rate the terrorism risk as particularly high. Passengers will now fight terrorists to the death, and everybody knows it. For this reason, loosening up several aspects of security might be a smart move. But I don't see that hanging the responsibility (but not authority to act) on the airlines would help us get there.