The alternative isn't a repeat of 9/11. You're assuming that passengers aren't a whole lot more motivated to overpower hijackers after 9/11 than before. One reason 9/11 could happen is that passengers generally assumed a hijacking was mostly a scary inconvenience, not a life-or-death situation.
A repeat of the 9/11 attack became impossible before that day was over. It relied on the passengers and crew cooperating with the hijackers until it was too late: they would think that the plane is being diverted or held for ransom and the safest thing to do would be to go along, because that's how hijacking worked from the 60s through the 90s. But now everyone knows about 9/11, so everyone will fight like hell to prevent the plane from being taken over, because the assumption has become that if the bad guys get control everyone will die, and if the hijackers claim otherwise no one believes that.
The bad guys know this: they figure an attempt to do a 9/11-style hijacking will result in failure and death without doing damage to anything but the plane itself. No flying into the Capitol or the Pentagon in a blaze of glory.
There has been plenty of hijackings since 9/11, and only in a few instances have passengers tried to resist. Maybe things would be different in the US, but I suspect even that would be highly contingent on how the hijackers would act (e.g. whether they'd have the presence of mind to make a big point of stating an intent that'd involve keeping everyone alive).
EDIT: It's worth noting that hijackers have overall been far more likely to get killed during a hijacking than passenger - as a passenger, unless you have very specific reasons to believe they're intending to crash the plane, it seems like a much safer bet to keep your head down and wait.
Hijacking airplanes after 9/11 is much more risky. Until 9/11, there was never a plot that involved intentionally hijacking an airliner with the intent of using it as a weapon and killing everyone on board. The assumption was "Oh, if we just give them what they want they'll let us all live."
Post-9/11, if anyone tries to hijack an airplane they're going to have every able-bodied male between the ages of 18 and 40 come at them with the expectation that they're fighting for their life. I know I personally would take my chances that they don't have a bomb: if I do nothing, I would assume I am definitely going to die. If I do something, the passengers collectively could overpower them and hope were bluffing about the bomb. If they weren't, it's the same outcome as doing nothing.
You neglected to mention that since 9/11, it would be almost impossible to do now what the hijackers did then. If that were attempted now, a whole plane load of vigilantes would rise up against the hijackers.
I'm of the opinion that nothing could've permanently prevented 9/11 except 9/11 itself.
Pre-9/11, hijackings meant you sit tight, land somewhere, and most of the folks probably walk away OK. Even an unarmed person could hijack a plane with the claim of concealed explosives or weapons.
Post-9/11, we have reinforced cockpit doors (the effectiveness of which were sadly demonstrated by Germanwings flight 9525) and passengers who know a successful hijacking probably means dying. Even on 9/11 itself we saw the impact of this - flight 93 wound up crashing in a field because the passengers knew there was nothing to lose by rising up.
How do you feel about the idea that the 9/11 terror attacks are virtual impossible in a post-9/11 world?
Remember that pre-9/11, plane hijackings meant you would get landed and then used as a bargaining chip for a ransom. So, now passengers know a hijacking attempt is a fight for their life (whereas before the recommended advice was to sit tight and let the hijackers do their thing).
Also, now, cockpit doors are reinforced and pilots won't open them for hijackers, no matter the cost.
There have been a couple hijackings in recent years. I think trying to get cockpit access is probably impossible, but you could still take hostages and demand the pilots fly somewhere.
>Any terrorist who wanted to make the headlines would set off a bomb in the TSA line at O'Hare. It would be trivial.
Trivial, but less carnage than a full plane going down. Airplane bombings multiple the deaths by 10X.
> Hi-jacking a plane has gotten orders of magnitude more difficult after 9/11.
Yes. It's important to remember that pre-9/11, the standard expectation was that in a hijacking, passengers would be hostages, not victims. As such, people were specifically instructed not to intervene. That's clearly out the window now.
What I don't understand is why? Is it in response to an increase in plane hijackings in the US since 9/11?
Unless the terrorists board with machine guns, 9/11 wouldn't be possible today. No passenger would assume that a bunch of middle eastern hijackers have any other intention than to kill them all, and it would be impossible for the hijackers to control the passengers.
The interesting thing is, contrary to what I expected would happen, hijackings still "work". As in: Plane hijackers succeed at taking control of planes about as often as before, in general without passengers risking their lives to overpower them.
For a while I thought that the biggest reason to not get into hysteria over security measures was that passengers would from then on see a hijacker as likely to kill them, and so taking control of a plane would get drastically harder either way.
I was wrong - apart from the odd inept wannabe bomber (the "shoe bomber" for example), passengers generally don't overpower hijackers.
Yet most passengers still survive hijackings, because just as before 9/11 most hijackers have no interest in committing suicide.
Things might be different if a bunch of muslims tried to hijack another plane in a major US city, or headed for one, but that scenario was an aberration when it happened, and still is.
9/11 is noteworthy for how little it changed hijackings despite what a major event it was: It didn't spawn a long range of copycats. It didn't cause passengers to risk their lives to stop future hijackers. It didn't cause any large drop in hijackings as a result of new security measures. It didn't cause any large increase in hijackings by "inspiring" others.
I still can't imagine anyone obeying hijackers anymore. If someone got up on a plane and said he had a bomb, I'd be running toward him to knock him down and incapacitate (ideally, by killing) before he'd even stopped with his announcement. I'm pretty sure on most US airlines I'd be blocked by a bunch of other passengers doing the same thing.
9/11 really screwed things for hijackers.
(EDIT: appears it was the co-pilot, and the reinforced door installed after 9/11 actually allowed him to keep the real pilot out! So at least it wasn't an EgyptAir 990 situation either...)
Before 9/11, all plane hijackings in America were a matter of a hostage scenario with some money. The safe thing was to let the hijackers do their thing.
Now that we know that the hijackers maybe be terrorists who want to use the plane as a weapon-- the American people will resist.
Flight 93 hijackers had box cutters. I'd be happy to go toe-to-toe against a guy with a box cutter.
Assuming someone managed to hijack a bunch of planes again, I doubt they could reproduce 9/11. The government would shoot them down.
Sure they could kill everyone on the plane, but a train has more passengers than a plane, and a determined terrorist could probably kill everyone on a train.
The hijackers were going to crash the plane and kill everyone on board and anybody at the target crash site. The calculus for using a plane as a missile has changed. Passengers simply won't allow it to happen and there is a locked cockpit door. A similar event isn't impossible but nothing TSA or air marshals do is preventing a hijacking.
now the pilots have learned that if there's a person with a knife aboard the plane, they won't open the cockpit doors to avoid a potential hijacking and more casualties. And passengers know that if hijackers take control of the plane, the hijacker might crash it somewhere instead of holding the passengers and crew hostage, like it was done with plane hijackings before 9/11 and might fight back.
So with the example of the 9/11 attacks, the situation has changed enough that a plane hijacking with a knife is much more unlikely
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