Based upon my many trips to Logan Airport (Boston), I say “yes”.
First: the TSA is not good at recognizing really suspicious behavior. They focus on random searches, and use no systematic means of targeting.
-Second: access to an airplane is easy, for those doing baggage handling
-Third, gaining access to the cockpit could be done by shooting out the locks.
Finally, if the perp is a suicide bomber, I could see how an explosive device could be brought in with the food, then activated remotely.
Which leads to another question: if an aircraft were destroyed in flight, what would the reaction be?
The biggest difference pre-9/11 and post-9/11 is that passengers will not be passive in the face of a hijacking anymore. The type of knife-wielding hijacking we saw on 9/11 may never succeed again.
As for bombs, that possibility is always there.
If the terrorists are willing to take the long view, they could start out in another country, learn to fly, get jobs as pilots in other countries, and fly them into targets here in the US. See: Germanwings. They wouldn’t have the terroristic advantage of full fuel tanks when they hit their targets, but if you’re flying a 747 into the White House, I don’t think it’s the fuel that you’re looking to make your point with.
Yes. Next question?
The full fuel tanks of the 9/11 flights were essential to bringing the towers down. The impacts alone would have left the towers standing and fairly easily repairable, and caused far, far fewer deaths. It took the jet fuel fires to weaken the structures and make them crumble.
Remember, OBL was an engineer. Both 9/11 and in 1993, the attackers knew exactly what they were doing.
If you mean a repetition of a large plane, or planes, flying into buildings, then I doubt it. Between the locked cockpit door, air marshals, and ever vigilant passengers I think that trick would be exceptionally hard to do again.
However a large scale event of another nature yes absolutely.
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No more airlines crashing into tall buildings. Locks on the cockpit doors pretty much eliminate that threat.
Something else? Sure. Dirty bombs, poisoning of water and/or air, drones bringing grenades into stadiums-- there are a ton of things they’ve surely thought of. Maybe not as spectacular as 9/11 in terms of videos or death counts, but I’m afraid large scale terror attacks will happen every couple decades.
Flying as a passenger doesn’t give you much insight into your second point. Your third point is useless without a gun which is still quite difficult (but not impossible) to do, and it’s my impression that it’s still wrong. And as a passenger you have no idea about your final point regarding bringing something in with the food.
What about flying as a passenger gives you knowledge of how airport security for staff and crew works?
It’s unlikely we’ll see an attempt to duplicate the 9/11 hijackings because they know that’s what we’re watching out for. If anyone has a desire for a devastating strike like that they’ll do something different. Right now if appears the great danger is small scale attacks. Ironically this is the kind of thing that was feared after 9/11 by sleeper cells that turned out not to exist.
Refresh my memory… what happened on November 1st, 1 AD?
Watch the Mythbusters video about shooting out a lock. This is movie bullshit and you cannot just shoot out a lock. There’s a reason why SWAT guys have special “shotguns” that are made to shoot out locks - mostly you will probably just break the lock and lock it even further.
I suppose maybe you could shoot all around the lock and reach in and unlock it, but I’m not sure what the cockpit doors are made of and how long that would take anyway.
An attempt to crash a dung cart into Caesar’s chariot.
This seems like the most bang for the terrorist buck, so to speak. With the latest hardware/software, drones are now trivially easy to fly, and can be fitted with cameras and transmitters for first-person-view navigating. Now the bad guy hangs a two-pound detonate-on-impact bomb on it, parks outside the next NFL game, and flies it into the stands. If Mr. Terrorist has half a dozen friends acting in concert, their bombs might only kill a dozen people - but the stampedes they start would kill hundreds more, all broadcast live on TV.
Or make it more likely. Consider if Andreas Lubitz had wanted to crash into a building instead of a mountain. Locks on the cockpit door make 4 accomplices unnecessary. Instead of 5 deranged thugs, all you need now is one.
How so? Implying that he could lock himself in the cockpit implies that the aircrew could not.
Not following you there. In the 9/11 scenario, it took 3-4 muscle men to ensure that the cockpit door could be breached and held. Now that the cockpit door is invulnerable to attack, those men are not needed as long as one pilot is in on the plan.
I misunderstood your post, thanks!
I’ve never understood why folk assume terrorists are so uncreative that they would only wish to reprise the airliner-into-a-building strategy. Heck, all we really needed to prevent that was locked cockpit doors.
The fact that they have not succeeded in anything else strongly suggests to me that the “threat” is not as great as advertised. Heck, a couple of knuckleheads with pressure cookers were able to accomplish more than any organized group has since. And previously, McVeigh just needed a truck full of fertilizer.
Except that in the US, one pilot is never left alone in the cockpit anymore. After the last incident this should be true worldwide.
The aircraft hijack caused many deaths and destroyed symbolic buildings. One can do more damage with an aircraft than a pressure cooker.