Are New TSA In-Flight Restrictions Pointless?

Spaceport security was tight in the sci-fi movie Total Recall. Unfortunately, modern-day airport security doesn't have this level of scanning technology (yet) (Columbia Pictures).

On Christmas Day, Nigerian wannabe terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab set fire to his pants on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it was on its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

The fire was sparked when Abdulmutallab failed to detonate a homemade mix of explosives that were carried on board the aircraft concealed in the crotch of his underwear.

Dutch national Jasper Schuringa was the first to react to the flames, pouncing on the 23 year old Nigerian. Through a combination of bomb-making ineptitude, heroic reaction of a passenger and swift response by air crews, disaster was averted and the only person who was hurt was the Al-Qaeda sympathizer with burned legs.

Now the terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for the bungled terror plot, heightening concerns that more attacks will be forthcoming.

In response, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) enacted new safety restrictions to prevent another bomb-in-underpants type scenario from happening again. At first, the regulations were mandatory, but after airline complaints that the rules were disproportionate to the real threat, the restrictions can now be used at the discretion of flight crews.

The international terror threat remained "Orange" throughout, even though this was the first real terror attempt on a U.S. airliner in recent years.

What's the Risk?

In the aftermath of any terrorist activity, the reaction of a nation must be balanced; security may need to be beefed-up, but unnecessary alarm should be avoided.

After all, the whole point of terrorism is to terrorize. If security forces start using overbearing powers to prevent terrorism, passenger freedoms will be hindered, unintentionally helping terrorist groups to spread fear and rendering last-minute Duty Free shopping impossible.

The initial act may be short-lived and devastating (as the U.S. tragically learned during the 2001 World Trade Center attacks), but the aftermath can whip up a frenzy of fear that is totally disproportionate to the real threat that exists.

As excellently put by Joel Johnson over at Gizmodo, the historic frequency of terrorist attacks on aircraft is astonishingly low:

In the last decade, according to statistician Nate Silver, there has been "one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 miles flown [the] equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune." (Sadly, this does mean that in the future we can expect one out of every two round-trip flights to Neptune to be hijacked.)

Indeed, the safest form of transportation (per billion kilometers) is air travel*, and the odds of dying in an aircraft-related accident (and, presumably, terrorist act) is 1-in-20,000.

To compare with another famously low statistic, the odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime is 1-in-6,250.

To put it crudely, you're 3.2 times more likely to be struck by lightning than getting killed by flying. Other statistics suggest that there is a 1-in-13 million (that's 1-in-13,000,000) chance of being killed by a terrorist attack during a non-stop flight. In this case, you are 2080 times more likely to be struck by lightning than be killed by a terrorist attack on a plane.

Potentially Useless?

Of course, when a successful terrorist attack is carried out, hundreds of people's lives can be lost in an instant, making air travel a potent target for terror organizations like Al-Qaeda. This fact is bound to make the public edgy and security services twitchy.

Unfortunately, in recent years, many security measures are being perceived as being unnecessary and potentially useless.

Who really pays attention to an "Orange Alert"? Remaining in a perpetually high state of alert is exhausting. I've never seen it switched to "Green," but I suppose that would negate the point of having a terrorism alert in the first place.

In response to the Dec. 25 terror attempt, the new TSA regulations calls for all passengers to remain seated an hour before landing and all laps need to be clear of everything (including books, sandwiches, cuddly toys, detonators). This was because Abdulmutallab went to the bathroom to prepare his bomb and then returned to his seat, covering his lap an hour before landing in Detroit. Now the TSA considers this final hour of flight to be prime bomb-making time, hence the restrictions.

To make your journey even more unbearable, the pilot has been instructed not to tell the passengers when the aircraft is flying over places of interest (just in case flying over the Grand Canyon triggers a terrorist urge).

Expanding on this logic, perhaps all passengers should now board their flight without wearing any trousers? I can guarantee this security measure would do a better job at making terror suspects think twice about packing their underwear with TNT.

All in all, these new measures are purely reactionary to a single terror plot, the main focus should really be on the technologies and methods used for security screening at the airport.

The new TSA restrictions are akin to closing the stable door after the horse has bolted; once the components for a bomb make it onto a plane, no restriction in-flight can assure passenger safety.

*Although, according to statistics gathered in 2000, buses outperform commercial air travel per billion journeys and per billion hours of travel, but compare this with the biggest killer and you'll see why I don't own a motorbike.