WI: Better Airport Security in the US Before 9/11?

What makes you assume box cutters are stopped? It's not that they weren't detected, they were permitted. It's not inconceivable a ban would come through without 9/11, but what is the driving force without an incident?

Potentially the Bojinka plot, although that focused on planting bombs rather than hijackings. You might have better luck with an earlier POD during the hijacking wave of the 1970s.
 

CalBear

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And with the TSA they created various other things such as PreCheck, CLEAR, and other things to make traveling easier for some - at a price. There’s big money in those programs and no incentive for the TSA to improve their screening to make it less of a hassle for the infrequent traveler.

The TSA had discussed doing a Risk Based Screening a few years ago which would have allowed some passengers and their bags to undergo a lighter screening while more risky passengers would receive a more thorough screening. But the cost and privacy concerns have sidelined it.

Sniffer dogs are too slow to process that many passengers and their bags. But technology is only as good as the $12/hr Officer that is doing the screening. Others have noted the ‘accuracy’ of those Officers in prior posts.
Yes, I am the proud holder of the first PreCheck number issued to a sapient non-Human Mammal. This may be because I am one of the very few non-Human Mammals with a credit card.
 
Better? It's not good now, the TSA is a joke. How the hell did I manage to bring home two 9mm bullets, one .375 magnum bullet, and two 12 bore shells in my hand luggage when flying back from DC a few years ago?
 

hammo1j

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Better? It's not good now, the TSA is a joke. How the hell did I manage to bring home two 9mm bullets, one .375 magnum bullet, and two 12 bore shells in my hand luggage when flying back from DC a few years ago?

I assume that was by accident rather than intent?
 
Today's TSA is all security threatre.


What would have stopped 9/11 was proper collection and sharing of intel. Locked cockpit doors and warnings to the flight crews that attempts to overpower aircraft are possible. 9/11 also depended on our sheep-like unwillingness to get involved or take action, in the case of hijacking, everyone assuming they're flying to Cuba.

I would not call what happened was caused by "our sheep-like unwillingness to get involved or take action". because as @Workable Goblin said above, stay calm and wait for rescue/ negotiation was pretty much the officially correct way for hostages to act promoted by all governments before 9-11.

Before 9-11, hijacking was widely considered by both law enforcement and terrorist organisations a mean, not an end by itself. 9-11 changed that perception.
 

DougM

Donor
I flue a LOT for business pre 9/11. And I was on a flight about a month or so after 9/11.
Before 9/11 the belief was (and history proves) that most folks did not get hurt in a typical hyjaking. On the flight after several of us talked about the fact that the passengers would have to step in if it happened in the future.

So yes the passengers let it happen but had no reason not to. On the other hand after 9/11 highjackings pretty much stopped as the passengers would fight.

As for the security. It is a joke still. Just a badly ran joke. I was flying out of London last year. I got the dreaded SSSS on my boarding pass. The problem is the SSSS enhanced screening is all but pointless. I will list the problems with it
1). You can’t check in online so you KNOW it is coming before you get to the airport (24 hours before actually) so you can just not go.
2). When you get to the airport you get a boarding pass that says “SSSS” right on it so you can just turn around and leave.
3). The “normal” security sees the SSSS on the pass and basically ignores you. So in my case they had my walk through the metal detector but otherwise didn’t check my bag or make me remove anything. It was easier then a standard security check.
4) the check you at the gate.

The result of the last two is that in my case I was traveling with my father. We both had backpacks. I was carrying both when we got to the gate and was told to give him back his pack and to take mine and get checked. So I handed him one of the two packs I was carrying. Thus I my pack was not checked much at security and I could have given THAT basically unchecked pack to my father and shown them his.

So in effect the SSSS gave me an opritunity to get a pack through security with LESS then normal levels of checking. Keep in mind I could have swapped packs with any in the whole airport between basic security and the gate.

So the current level of security is nothing to brag about.

I have seen 20 year olds of the ethnic background that perpetrated 9/11 walk through security with out a second look (actually a group of 4) and an elderly lady with a walker was all but strip searched (and maybe she was as ultimately she was escorted into a “room”.

So our current security is a joke and is more about making people feel save then actually making them safe.

Besides the terrorists will find new ways to hit not use those we have seen before.
 
In 2001...uh huh. The calls that were made were from Airphones mostly. Unless someone had a reason to call out there wouldn’t be info coming in.
Dude I had a cell phone in 1994 and had internet on my phone in 99..

And yes airphones.. I remember there being sever calls reported.. Either way the point is to have better security before.. Which actually would mean a change in attitudes and allowed items.

Maybe a real ID ACT.. better imigration enforcement, that alone would have done some wonders.

It's more than just airport security.
 
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And yes airphones.. I remember there being sever calls reported..
There were several calls, as I reported in my previous post, but this wasn't a very efficient method of information transfer compared to what you could do today. As @wcv215 notes, it depends on people onboard the aircraft calling out and getting to people who know what's going on. Not all that difficult, but it still introduces a certain degree of lag time between each strike and when people on board the other aircraft could learn about it, which is borne out by the actual call records. Only on Flight 93 was there a sufficient gap between when the attacks started and when passengers learned about them that they could attempt resistance effectively, which is borne out by the fact that only on Flight 93 did the passengers actually attempt to retake control of the aircraft.

For example, the Flight 175 passengers and cabin crew don't seem to have learned about Flight 11, the previous attack, at all, and were nevertheless considering trying to storm the cockpit--but only a few minutes before the aircraft hit the World Trade Center, far too late to do anything successfully. Similarly, at least one passenger on Flight 77 did learn of the attacks from her husband, the then-Solicitor General, but only about 10-15 minutes before the aircraft hit the Pentagon. Trying to retake the aircraft would have required that she persuade the other passengers that it would be worthwhile, then organize an attack on the hijackers in this extremely limited time window. Possible, theoretically, but very unlikely.

There's a reason I spent an entire paragraph discussing exactly how information flowed, or rather failed to flow, to the hijacked aircraft and how this meant that there was just not enough time outside of the old paradigm for any kind of resistance to form. It's kind of annoying you totally ignored that paragraph, which I wrote specifically to forestall this argument.
 
This whole security theatre is a huge waste of resources. Solid cockpit doors have stopped hijacking but as we all know by now that came at a cost too.
 
This probably isn't plausible, but I figured that the 1993 WTC bombings would make Clinton nervous about foreign terrorists traveling to the US to commit similar acts, so he decides to revamp the US commercial air system.
So a truck bombing makes them increase air travel restrictions to what would be in pre-9/11 eyes insane levels? If they're coming to the US then they're boarding planes in other countries, even when US airlines introduced out their own 'enhanced' security checks it didn't always work – case in point Pan Am Flight 103.
 

hammo1j

Donor
I'd used the same bag when staying a few nights with another mate in VA, did quite a bit of shooting, so yes an accident.

Wow! That would be front page news in Europe. It always amazes me the different attitude to guns and ammo in Europe that we have compared to you folks in the states.

I have to ask what would be the sanctions against you if they found that stuff?

My father used to set off ammo as a boy from crashed planes without a gun using something percussive though I dont remember what. I do remember him tipping out a cartridge and being unimpressed as the gunpowder slow burned. Would your bullets have been usable as a weapon, though?

One other thing that just occurred. With budget airlines all the rage what if ISIS booked the whole plane? Are there sanctions against this? With cockpit lockdown would they ever prevail?
 

Kaze

Banned
What makes you assume box cutters are stopped? It's not that they weren't detected, they were permitted. It's not inconceivable a ban would come through without 9/11, but what is the driving force without an incident?


There was a man called "D.B. Cooper" who boarded a plane with a gun and a grenade. Then he proceeded to hijack the airplane and demand money or... boom.
Here is the thing - had Cooper asked for a single dollar more than what he demanded, the insurance could not cover the loss and might have lead to the airline's bankruptcy filing. After Cooper fell off the horizon, the airline began putting in metal detectors so it would never happen again. Other airline followed one by one after other hijackings - either for money, take me to country xyz, ransom the passengers, political statement xyz, and the like - to put in metal detectors at every airport, because the insurance company might not cover the loss of their aircraft if hijacked, where in this is bad for the board-room's bottom-line.

No airline at the time ever thought of using the hijacked airplane as a flying bomb - other than putting a bomb aboard and killing the passengers for a political, religious, or other kind of statement.
 
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