What the airline would do, however, is pass the cost of this 'insurance premium' right along to the customer in a declared or undeclared fee. The airline could easy do this since "It's for your safety". Maybe some airlines would be better than others, but it seems to me like it would be just another scam for an insurance company to get richer and richer.

Also, if the employees had to pay, they would probably sue the airline or the offending passenger, since they felt in good faith that they were 'doing their job'. Or get their unions to force a pay raise to cover the policy. Airline in turn raises fars to cover the raises. Et cetera...

Sigh. You're probably right.

and it doesn't mean that death may not result.

Nope. And neither does just flying the plane to its destination.

When someone presents a false choice argument like "should the plane divert or do you want everyone to die?" I'm going to call them on it.

How do you know? Are you omnipotent, or just guessing? I have over 10,000 military hours and 15 years of heavy commercial air travel, I have seen people die on acft. It is not pretty. I have a number of friends flying for most of the majors today and the airlines have strict SOP for certain incidents and types of actions, they DON'T have an option of continuing to the destination in many of those. Even in the military, with only flight crew aboard who are fully trained, SOP will more often than not dictate landing the acft to resolve the problem.

Justageek, I didn't miss the point at all- You do not understand aircraft/airline operations. To solve your dilemma, we could just make all airlines like El Al, when the cockpit door is closed, the back of the bus ceases to exist as far as the pilots are concerned, that way you get no diverts and no "problems". Or let a situation get out of hand and bring the acft down, then you are looking at $100's of millions of dollars in lawsuits... So to me, even at $500k vs. many millions, the diverts make sense.

Of course the REAL answer is to make people accountable for their own actions, e.g. arrest, confinement, and realistic sentences.

Divert, shmivert. When your route is HNL-LAX, there's no diverting, just a mid-way point. Diverting's not all it's cracked up to be! "Stay the course!".

There is always Midway if you're flying the A route...

Sorry, but diversions for BOB on a bag, water bottles and cosmetics are just plain insane and no one is going to die as a result of not diverting in these situations. It's not rocket science and one doesn't have to be omnipotent to realize that.

No thanks, that's a classical over-solution to a non-problem. There is no need to shoot anyone or blast planes out of the sky for water. This country really needs to get a grip on itself and what is really a threat and what is not.

I agree completely. Let's begin with the TSA "leadership". Let's also include any airline employee who falsely cites or makes up a "security" directive and attempts to enforce it. Let's add screeners who steal, damage property, violate the ADA or touch passengers inappropriately.

Agreed! Also add the TSA employees who make up security requirements... I travel with weapons quite a bit, and am now to the point that I carry a folder with all the current CFR and TSA regs (the few that I can find), just to lessen my problems. Since I fly out of IAD the most, I have gotten to know some of the UA heavies there, and have on more than one occasion noted GA's and CSR's performance to them (Good and Bad).

How many have you seen die because of a bottle of water, Muslims playing with their cellphones, an accidentally locked lavatory door, or any of the other miscellaneous absurd reasons that flights have been diverted just in the past few weeks? I'm guessing zero.

I think accoutability goes both ways. If you present a true risk to a flight (say, Richard Reid, or a violent and un-subduable passenger), then you should go to jail. But the whole point of my OP is that FAs/pilots/FAMs should also be accountable for their actions. When they divert for something that turns out not to be a threat, they should be held financially responsible for the decision in terms of impact on the airline and passengers. They'll still divert sometimes, because they are on the plane and don't want to die if they perceive a genuine threat. But at least there will be some "pushback" against the purely delusion/hysteria-driven diversions that have been happening left and right during the past month. So they'll only divert when they truly feel their life is in danger, instead of the ridiculousness that is going on now.

Anyway, this whole discussion is pretty moot for the various reasons etch5895 mentioned. I guess the status quo remains: when you get on a flight, there is essentially zero chance that a terrorist will affect your flight, but a nontrivial chance that an overzealous FA/pilot/FAM will.