How much should you worry about airline terrorism?
Is it truly worth new, invasive, and highly inconvenient security measures?
Are we safer for throwing out our shampoo, or is this a false sense of security?
How does the risk of terrorism compare to the more mundane risk of a maintenance crew installing the wrong part, a pilot missing a landing in bad weather, or a controller clearing two planes to occupy the same space at the same time?
In North America, there has not been a single criminal fatality on board a commercial aircraft since Sept. 12, 2001.
Define a major accident as one that kills more than 15 people. By that measure, there have been three major accidents caused by terrorism or crime in Europe, Asia, or North America since Sept. 12, 2001, killing 202 people.
In that same time, there have been at least 13 major accidents that were not criminal in nature, killing roughly 1300 people. (I exclude Africa and South America because those continents tend to have much poorer maintenance records, which would have driven the accident count significantly higher.)
Consider that if the British conspirators had succeeded in destroying 10 aircraft (which they did not), then the number of accidents would have ended up as: 13 criminal, 13 accidental. So at worst, they would have raised the risk of criminal action to about the same as an accident on a per-aircraft basis. (The casualty count would have been higher, but if you are on an accident airplane, that's small consolation.)
So the security system, as it worked before Wednesday, was pretty good. But consider the failures. The Sept. 11 attackers walked on an airplane with all the weapons they needed. So did Richard Reid. We only started checking pointy objects and X-raying our shoes after those incidents happened. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Instead, the extra cash that will likely be needed to enforce the new rules should go into the only truly effective way to stop criminals and terrorists, which is to figure out their intentions and arrest them long before they try to smuggle a bomb past the checkpoint.
So the next time you are taking your shoes off in a security line, or suffering from dehydration on an aircraft because they took away your water bottle, or worried about the laptop that you were forced to put in your checked luggage (God help us if it comes to that), ask yourself if the fear that led to these measures is justified by the risk. I would suggest that it is not.
Source: Aviation Safety Network
Major aircraft accidents caused by terrorism or crime since Sept. 12, 2001 (North America, Europe, and East Asia only):
May 7, 2002: China Northern MD-80 experiences fire in cabin and crashes near Dailan, China; fire likely set by suicidal man carrying gasoline on board; 112 dead
Aug 24, 2004: Volga-Aviaexpress TU-134 and Sibir Airlines TU-154 simultaneously bombed over Russia; Chechen separatists blamed; 90 dead
Major aircraft accidents caused by something else since Sept. 12, 2001 (North America, Europe, and East Asia only):
Oct 4, 2001: Sibir Airlines TU-154 hit by a Ukranian surface-to-air missile in a military training accident, crashing into the Black Sea; 78 dead
Oct 8, 2001: SAS MD-80 collides with Citation on runway in Milan; controller error blamed, 110 dead
Nov 12, 2001: American A300 crashes in Belle Harbor, NY, after losing its tailfin; pilot error blamed, 260 dead
Nov 24, 2001: Crossair BAe-146 crashes on landing near Zurich; weather blamed, 24 dead
Apr 15, 2002: Air China 767 crashes into mountains on approach near Pusan, South Korea; pilot error blamed, 129 dead
May 25, 2002: China Airlines 747 breaks up in mid-air and crashes in the Taiwan Strait; maintenance error blamed, 225 dead
Jul 1, 2002: Bashkirian Airlines TU-154 collides in midair with DHL 757, crashing near Uberlingen, Germany; pilot and controller error blamed, 71 dead
Jan 8, 2003: US Airways Express Beechcraft 1900 stalls on takeoff and crashes at Charlotte, NC; maintenance error blamed, 21 dead
Nov 21, 2004: China Yunnan Airlines CRJ-200 crashes on takeoff near Baotou, China; cause under investigation, 53 dead
Aug 6, 2005: Tuninter ATR-72 runs out of fuel and crashes near Palermo, Italy; maintenance error blamed, 16 dead
Aug 14, 2005: Helios Airways 737 runs out of fuel after a pressurisation problem and crashes near Grammatikos, Greece; maintenance error blamed, 121 dead
May 3, 2006: Armavia A320 crashes on approach near Sochi, Russia; weather blamed, 113 dead
Jul 9, 2006: Sibir Airlines A310 crashes on landing at Irkutsk, Russia; cause under investigation but likely weather related, 124 dead