"Well, duh," will be your reaction; please bear with a newbie. If this is a topic that has already been beaten to death, please direct me to the relevant threads.

It occurs to me that a bomb in checked luggage or shipped as cargo is a bigger danger than one carried to the cabin, if for no other reason than that the suicide bomber can succeed no more than once.

I know that we try to avoid that by matching a list of those who check to a list of those who board. But how hard would it be to circumvent this?

I know that checked baggage is subject to some scrutiny....but, in the opinion of FT observers, is this scrutiny truly effective. Especially because x-rays are a major element in that scrutiny, and as many are pointing out, x-rays cannot detect explosives.

Baggage gets x-rayed and if you have high density items (i.e. tools) it gets opened and checked by hand. The big gaping hole in security is that cargo doesn't get the same scrutiny level that checked baggage gets so if a terrorist knew which flight the cargo bomb was going to be on, just ship the bomb by air. TSA was ordered by Congress to be doing 100% cargo screening by now, but for whatever reason they haven't been able to close that gaping hole in their security operation and continue to beg for just another six months every six months it comes up for review.

Thanks.

So a bomb would have to be high-density? I suppose that makes sense; other places I get the impression that the explosive needs to be packed tightly to be effective.

As to cargo--I understand why the explosion of a Fed Ex plane would not have nearly the psychological impact (except on Fed Ex pilots) that the explosion of a commercial airliner would have. But if I'm a terrorist, I probably don't care much which flight it's on; just that it be a passenger flight. If I take a box to United and say, here, ship this as cargo, do I know that it will go on a scheduled UA flight? Or do the airlines have separate cargo flights, or sub-contract with freight carriers?

Or would it be pretty suspicious of me to even attempt to ship a package by a commercial airline, when carriers devoted entirely to freight are so readily available?

To guarantee your explosive gets on the plane you want, all you have to do is get an inside man.

Very few Americans would be willing to smuggle explosives, but plenty are willing to smuggle drugs. Make a few runs smuggling "drugs", then replace the "drugs" with an explosive payload.

Done deal, plane goes boom and you are a terrorist hero.

Of course the risk of smuggling would go way down if the TSA would only protect the luggage from molestation after the screening.

Carriers use what is available that is going to delivery the package on time so you really don't have much of a clue as to which flight the package would be on. As to shipping a package on a passenger plane, it happens all of the time if they have cargo space for it. That is why the screening of all cargo going on to a passenger plane is such a big deal. It doesn't happen due to costs, both personnel and equipment.

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/worl...o-us-1.1879668

The story goes on to say that this was ongoing over the last decade. In this case just drugs but what would have happened if someone had placed a weapon in one of these shipments?

The OP mentions FedEx cargo but I'm not sure they understand that cargo is also shipped on most passenger flights also. There is a substantial risk because TSA does not conduct 100% screening of these shipments.

Even after that travelers baggage is a threat because it is not held in a secure manner after screening. Airport workers, including TSA, are not screened 100% of the time as they enter the secure areas of the airports. They all have the ability to introduce contraband and have that material placed on aircraft.

Of all the threats against commercial passenger travel by aircraft DHS and TSA have failed the citizens of the US by not closing these obvious weaknesses.

The unanswered question is why?

Why? No one wants to stand around looking at a bunch of bags coming and going. Not glamorous. Not high profile. Out of sight out of mind. Not important in other words.

I don't disagree but it is the "grunt" work that gets the bridges built, roadways laid and it will be "grunt" work that keeps the next airplane from getting blown out of the sky.

It's sad that the superior intellect of DHS/TSA leadership fails to understand this.

Come on folks. Do not let your thinking follow the TSA train.

Instead of asking why cargo does not get as much inspection, you should flip this over. The vast majority of what you see passengers get is just for looks.

Liquids are a good example. Only because somebody tried it, do we have those silly rules. Any idiot knows it is still easy to get liquids onboard. Just think for a minute. If you need help, just ask any college student heading into the big football game.

Knives and other weapons also can easily be taken onboard. But we go through the hassles so that we can better safe than sorry.

Or, in at least a few cases, it has been shown that you can easily just walk into the terminal by entering the wrong way. Sure they emptied the terminal, and in the latest case it appears it was innocent, but if it was a bad guy, he could have EASILY left some bad items hidden within the terminal before they sent everyone out.

So, bottom line, we don't bother with cargo much, because nobody is looking.

I really think the bad guys are just laughing at us.

The answer is not that hard. I don't know what the screening issues are today for cargo, but the freight operations are a big part of the airline's business. The mail is carried on airplanes. How much of it is pre-screened by the post office? Hard to tell. Truly rushed stuff can be transported via the airlines on a "counter-to-counter" basis on pretty much the same mechanism you use when you buy a ticket. If a business needs to get something somewhere fast and reliably, they can dispatch a cargo agent to the local airport and buy passage for the package for around $100 one way. You go to the counter with your package, 30 minutes or more prior to a flight, pay the freight costs and your package is on its way. At the destination, it is picked up at the airline's counter. You can ship up to 45 kg this way.

I don't know how much screening is done on these since I've always shipped 'em by bonded freight agent back in the day I was involved in this.

Off hand, I can think of maybe 1 or 2 thousand ways to do badness with inadequately screened cargo which are better left unsaid.

Here's been my question: if checked baggage is secure then why do things get stolen out of bags ALL THE TIME? If someone can steal something valuable out of checked luggage then what stops them from putting something explosive in?

Absolutely nothing, and remember, airport workers are not subject to 100% screening, courtesy TSA.

OK; I feel a lot less comfortable, now. What triggered the question was learning that a bomb in checked baggage destroyed a commercial aircraft departing from here in Denver back in 1955, apparently the second destruction by sabotage of an American commercial aircraft in flight.

But if the screening of checked baggage and cargo is a shot through with weaknesses as appears to be the case, what are we to conclude from the fact there have not been any cargo-hold bombings by al-Qaeda or its minions? Is our safety in that whatever the ineptitude level of TSA may be, it is matched by the failure of terrorist leadership to recognize opportunity?