o They have a grand total of 37 airplanes in their fleet.
o They engage in aggressive racial profiling.
o Their passenger pattern typically consists of people flying to and from Israel. It's pretty straightforward to identify the aberration in that crowd.
o By simply using the filter of "You are likely among the racial/ethnic/cultural target-crowd that is likely to be a terrorist" and then applying selective screening, you pretty much eliminate a fairly major vector for attack.
Admittedly, one of the reasons why profiling takes place at El Al, is that is because it works for that particular target. The United States, even if it were willing to engage in profiling, has a much broader set of attackers - you'd end up finding everyone included in your profile.
But, because the United States doesn't have the same straightforward problem of identifying who the _attackers_ are, they need to engage in "defense in depth" that El Al has the luxury of not requiring. Ergo - no large volumes of liquids (Note - the bottle size maximum is likely related to the highly oxygen reactive properties of the target liquids - you can't really combine them into one large bomb after the security checkpoint - and the small bottles aren't large enough to do _too_ much damage. A few people might be killed, or seriously injured - but it's unlikely you could bring a plane down within the restrictions of the TSA liquid size)
Shoes, likewise, with their metal inserts and large and easily concealed compartments, need to be scanned in the X-Ray machine.
Here are some simple steps that would dramatically increase security:
o Eliminate Carry On Luggage. This would be an issue on long flights for the work crowd though, as well as people carrying food/supplies for babies, anything valuable that they don't want to check, and people with medical requirements. Some Canadian Ports of entry were effectively doing that this week though.
o Full Body Scans with Back-Scatter/Millimeter Wave scans. This is way overdue, and the number one tactical failure of the TSA. Start your stopwatch - within 48 months 100% of inbound international passengers will be subject to some type of Full Body Scan or Pat Down. It will be interesting to see if the same thing will occur domestically.
o Full Pat-Down for all passengers - They actually did this at YVR a couple days ago. Slowed things down a little, but that's because they didn't have enough staff to do it quickly. They need to get over their tendency not to search sensitive areas if they want to ensure it's done with 100% effectivness.
o Bomb Sniffers/Dogs - I'm surprised nobody has automated this more effectively yet.
Note that any _one_ of these last three would have caught the Christmas Underwear Bomber - in fact, would likely have dissuaded him, and a large class of attackers, in the first place.