The former, I believe (assume you mean TSA later in 2001, not 2011). I'm talking about this in the context of answering Boggie Dog's question. There are two rationales for screening aviation passengers:

1. Safety of other passengers. In this case, a smaller plane means that someone who intends harm has a limited number of people he can hurt. Pax are free to make the decision that they don't want to fly on a plane where pax don't go through security inspection.
2. Safety of the non-flying public. The non-flying public have a safety interest in ensuring that planes aren't turned into weapons. Hence, the general public has grounds to require a reasonable level of security on board aircraft. In this case, a plane with lower speed, size, and range represents less of a danger to the non-flying public, reducing the rationale for spending a given amount of money to secure that plane.

Note that I believe that both interests 1 and 2 can be fully satisfied for all types of commercial aviation through, at most, 9/10/01 levels of security (metal detector and baggage x-ray), particularly with reinforced cockpit doors on aircraft.

So please outline the alternative. Let's stop screening people so you can just bring handguns onto planes.

Perhaps instead of just whining about things you can outline what should be changed and then dig into the counterarguments of those changes.

You believe the threat is so great that arriving pax must be screened before they are let loose in the sterile area.

Meanwhile, you have no problem with an entirely unscreened small airplane landing at a major airport because...??

It's not enough to say that the plane will land away from the terminal and the pax will be bussed to their security screening. That's assuming the pilot of the small aircraft isn't a bad guy who has no intention of landing at a remote parking site. By the time anyone realizes his ill intent, it will be far too late to stop him.

What is your problem? Why do you feel you need to bash others' comments?
Your attitude seems to parallel all that is bad with the TSA. Do you work for them?

First, that's a false dichotomy. Second, you can bring handguns onto planes now - for every 5 guns the TSA intercepts, 95 make it onto planes. Third, completely abandoning screening would be safer than what we have now. The laziness and slovenliness of clerks causes the lines to be processed with glacial slowness, causing a concentration of passengers at the checkpoint. This concentrated mass is much more vulnerable to an attack than the passengers would be if they were dispersed through the terminal. Nothing the TSA does makes any positive contribution aviation security, so jamming up the lines the way they do creates danger with no counterbalancing benefit.

As for things to change:

Smarter clerks
Fire clerks who are too learn or do their jobs
Fire clerks who abuse passengers
End of the Shoe Carnival
End of the War on Water
Übermenschen screening for all
Fire all redundant clerks

A fair point, but I don't object to being served up a softball like that.

TSA needs to stop worrying about pax. Some of the biggest issues that have come up in the last couple years were those who control the planes or have access to secure areas without need for screening. What next TSA screening for Cessna flights?

Good point. TSA has refused to address the insider threat issue and refuses to screen airport workers who have the greatest opportunity to introduce contraband to sterile areas of airports.

Security Theater!

Everything that I am reading says the crash in Egypt was an explosive placed on the plane by an airport worker.

It doesn't really matter how it gets there, the end result will be the same. But what is the sense of screening passengers when those people who have the most opportunity and access go unscreened?

TSA's failure to screen airport workers is criminally negligent.

Correct (except 737s also screened passengers). Also no silly liquid rule, and no need to remove shoes or belt for domestic.

My recollection is that the rule of thumb is "if the flight could theoretically reach Australia, and hence become another country's problem, we'll screen it, but if the airplane's range means the flight's purely domestic, it's our (NZ's) call, and we're fine not screening."

*facedesks* *facedesks* *facedesks* *facedesks* *facedesks* *facedesks*

For Christ's sake, at least TRY to be at least a LITTLE intellectually honest... please?