My impression is that the level of explosives needed to bring down a plane is not possible, while the level of explosives needed to cause severe non-critical damage (depressurization and 1-5 deaths, 1-15 injuries) is far too small to prevent. On Flight 434, the nitroglycerin was brought onto the plane in a bottle of contact lens solution.
Also the whole idea of the liquid ban is that it’s possible to smuggle a number of “safe” liquids aboard and then mix them in the plane and thus first creating the bomb there.
Nitroglycerin is hardly safe - which is why Flight 434 didn’t result in a liquid ban (apart from the ban on bringing nitroglycein on planes allready in place and in part the reason the plot failed).
The idea leading to the liquid ban is - as previously stated - near impossible, making the ban useless and wasteful.
Wiki implies that his target was probably the fuel tank, which was under the bomb on older 747 models, but 2 seats forward on that model. I don’t know if the blast would have ruptured the fuel tank, but I assume if it had, everyone would have been cooked mid-air. Apparently, according to a WaPo article, he used cotton as a stabilizer for the nitro to stop it going off if he looked funny at his bag at any point of the day.
I remember a few years ago, before the bruhaha about carrying liquid on planes, I has a can of zippo fuel pulled from my carry-on. Somebody behind me said, “You can’t take that on the plane,” in a sort of surprised voice. I couldn’t really see the sense in that as I was also carrying on a perfectly allowable litre bottle of 92% absinthe, but I kept my mouth shut. Commerce, meet security.
whoa nellie. I work for a border enforcement agency, and I have never ever heard of the folks at my location seizing a laptop without just cause - usually child porn, and usually because the person either had a record as a sex offender and was coming back to the states from Thailand or somewhere else.
When I went over to the states last year, I was wearing a Fidel Castro silhouetted shirt with AK47s on the sleeves. No problems. I had a nice chat with one of the agents there about whitewater rafting, of all topics, while he did a cursory search of my bags and apologized for the inconvenience.
I also helped some chick from Hong Kong with her luggage while she went off to get the proper forms to fill up at the immigration. It’s generally a bad idea to hand your luggage to someone else for them to watch over, or watch over someone else’s luggage, for that matter. But hey, nothing bad happened.
And when I was going back home, I had this huge black duffel with a motherboard and quad core processor in it. It didn’t even get searched. Talked to the agent at that point about … Diablo 2. Ha!
I shit you not.
This was in SFO, though. They get a lot of Asians through on a daily basis. Maybe things are different in other airports.
Asians aren’t seen as a risky ethnic group. Er, not that our fine stalwart border patrol would engage in racial profiling or anything.
No one bothered with my laptop the last time I cleared customs, either. In fact the most grief I got was in Korea for bringing shaving cream in my luggage. Apparently shaving cream was a known weapon of mass destruction used by North Korean terror operatives. And South Korean angry policemen are freakin’ scary dudes.
I did see some African dudes all decked out in full African garb get held up at the airport, though. They had to go to some special room away from everyone else.
I guess that’s what you get for dressing funny.