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Comment by mukyu | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the airline passengers get to decide what happens to themselves. If a bomb or hijackers get on a plane far more is at risk than those that are actually on the plane.

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Besides 9/11, where have passenger jets been used as weapons? Isn’t the worst case a demand of a ransom in exchange for the hostage travelers? How are others “far more at risk”?

But you don't get it. It's A Different World(tm) now that 9/11 happened.

Shoe bomb, underwear bomb, water bottle bomb, cargo bomb, these were all (thwarted) attempts to destroy a plane in transit over metropolitan areas. When is the last time someone hijacked a plane and demanded a ransom for the passengers outside of a movie? What do you exactly think happens to a plane when it explodes over a populated area?

It’s hard to imagine the common case would involve fatalities greater than double the occupancy. As an urban citizen, you’re still a bajillion times more likely to die in a car accident than due to an exploding plane…

They were all thwarted... but the water and cargo bombs were thwarted by intelligence work, not by security screening, and the underwear guy really should have been.

When is the last time someone hijacked a plane and demanded a ransom for the passengers?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969

and many other times.

You realize that is from 1994, right? I looked at wikipedia's list of hijackings and did not see any in the last 10 years.

Yeah, but hijacking is not some movie fantasy. It happens.

Okay - so where do you draw the line with regards to airline security? What's fundamentally different about flying today -vs- 20 years ago?

The cockpit door is armored.

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