I don't know how effective any of these techniques would be to a terrorist, however cool and ingeniously constructed the weapons were. The whole security TSA thing is mostly a show anyways.
Taking over a plane with box cutters was mostly show as well. It only worked in 2001 because people went along with terrorist theater.
If any would be terrorists tried the same tactic from 2001 today they would be mauled in the cockpit. Prior to 2001, passengers assumed they would be hostages and would come out unharmed if they cooperate. Now they assume they are potential collateral damage. That's a huge difference.
The only thing they actually need to prevent getting past screening is explosives. Every other method I can think of would not work fast enough before the passengers take you out.
The only way to overpower an entire plane full of passengers is in numbers and spread throughout the plane. Social Network Analysis can be guess if more than N passengers not sitting together (i.e. not family or friends) are likely acquaintances warranting greater scrutiny.
I would hope the passengers on a plane would be so brave, but there is a real collective action problem there for the passengers. Best case scenario, there are enough brave people on board willing to selflessly risk death to -- hopefully -- save lives. Would I? Would you? You don't know what you're made of until the moment comes, and I hope neither you nor I are ever tested in this way.
Remember, individually it's "rational" (in the game-theoretic sense) to let the other brave folks take the risk, while you sit there nervously and think about the kids/parents/pets who couldn't bear to be without you. And let someone else be the hero.
Worse case scenario, nobody is brave, and everyone dies as a result.
It also happened on 9/11 - the plane that went down in Shanksville PA didn't make it to its target because the passengers heard about the other three planes and didn't care to run into a building at high speed.
Yeah, I knew about that particular example, but I felt that the parent could have argued that it was a special case because they had foreknowledge of what was happening, whereas these other cases they took initiative.
In any case, you are completely correct.
I don't think your analysis quite works, because the scenario in which nobody acts has the worst possible outcome.
Let's make a terribly naive model in which there are 200 passengers, and the percentage chance of them succeeding in fighting back against hijackers is equal to the number of passengers who fights back. One passenger fights back means 1% chance of success, 50 passengers means 50% chance, 100 means 100% chance, and any more just saturates at 100%. This is wrong since the real-world chances are almost certainly not linear, but I think the basic idea of the chance starting at zero and increasing with the number of passengers fighting is sound.
Now, start with a case where nobody fights back. That means there is a 100% chance that everybody is going to die. Thus nobody has anything to lose. If they fight back, then they have a chance at living. If they don't, they are certain to die. The rational choice is then to fight back.
Now, some people have chosen to fight back. Do you join them, or do you wait? Joining them increases the odds of success, and therefore your risk of death. Not joining them increases your risk of death.
The one complication in this is your chance of being killed in the fighting when the hijackers are defeated. However, I think it's reasonable to suppose that your individual chances of dying go down the more passengers who fight back. If many others are also fighting, your odds of dying are low. If few others are also fighting, your odds of dying in the fight are high, but your odds of dying because they lost the fight are also high. I suspect that the rational course of action is going to be to join them as long as the fighting group is smaller than a pretty large size.
In any case, it's impossible for there to be a rational equilibrium in which nobody fights back, because all actors improve their odds of survival by choosing to fight back in that case, even if they end up acting alone. The equilibrium thus must involve some number of people fighting, and although I'm not sure how many that would be, it seems reasonable to think that it's a lot.
Your analysis needs to take into account the social psychology of conformity on individual human behavior. If not one soul acts when the gravity of the situation is made known, then the likelihood of anyone acting remains low. However, the moment a single person acts, due to conformity (see results from any experiments carried out by Solomon Asch for data[0]), the likelihood that many people will act together goes up astronomically. Now, the question to ask to determine if a single person will act is highly related to the presence of passengers on the plane that have been trained to take action, e.g. military personal, EMTs, first responders, Coast Guard, fire fighters, etc. The presence of one or more of these people on a flight greatly increases the chance of someone attempting to wrest control from any hijackers, and others quickly following suit.
Car accidents are always interesting because they often have the same dynamics, those who respond are those who have had even the most rudimentary training to respond. Almost everyone lacking such trainers waits for others to act. As someone trained to act, I've actually been in such a situation first hand as a victim and been the first to respond. I was in a vehicle traveling at ~45mph and another vehicle pulled out without looking. I t-boned her vehicle the moment my car came to a standstill, I whipped out my phone called 911 and immediately after getting off the phone with the 911 operator, I went to check on the other driver.
Trying to analyze people like economists do, considering people to be merely self-interested agents, doesn't paint the whole picture. Many people in society are trained to act in a way contrary to what a simple simulation would suggest. Among 200 people on a plane, the likelihood that there are 2-3 such people trained to respond is pretty high, and at least high enough that a would-be terrorist has no way of knowing if they are lucky enough to have picked the rare plane where no such people trained to respond are present.
> If any would be terrorists tried the same tactic from 2001 today they would be mauled in the cockpit. Prior to 2001, passengers assumed they would be hostages and would come out unharmed if they cooperate. Now they assume they are potential collateral damage. That's a huge difference.
How good are the new secure cockpit doors? If responsible for securing planes I would be worried about a surprise attack getting through while the door is open and then locking the doors before any of the passengers have time to react. I suspect that the secure doors may be counter-productive and less safe than a plane full of passengers able to help.
Another potential threat is one of the pilots themselves if they can subdue the other pilot and close the door can anything be done?
Equipment available doesn't really matter though short of semi-automatic weapons and explosives.
That would be hard to pull off. The cockpit door is rarely open during flight, and when the cockpit door needs to open, the flight attendants barricade the front of the plane using the food service carts locked diagonally across the isle. The door itself is only open for a few seconds, and the barrier is enough to shut it quickly if anyone even attempts to move towards the front.
True, but it only underscores the point that confiscating, e.g., nail clippers* is stupid when one can build _grenades_ in the airport. Sure, maybe you still can't take down a plane or kill a lot of people with a "fraggucino", but you can do a lot more damage than you can with nail clippers!
