Why box cutters found on a jetBlue flight is not a cause for concern

The recent news about a pair of box cutters being found on a jetBlue flight may at first seem frightening, but it is probably not a cause for concern for the average passenger. Last Saturday, on February 26th, several box cutters fell from the carry on bag of a passenger on jetBlue flight 837 shortly before the aircraft was due to depart New York's JFK airport for a flight to the Dominican Republic.

A flight attendant who saw the box cutters fall out of the bag informed the captain. The passengers were evacuated, the aircraft searched, and the passengers rescreened before the aircraft was allowed to depart. The passenger who owned the box cutters, who was reportedly a factory worker from New Jersey, was interviewed by authorities and released without being charged.

Why box cutters are a big deal
According the the 9/11 Commission Report (see page 9), a passenger on American Airlines flight 77 (which was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon) reported that the hijackers were armed with box cutters. The Commission did not mention whether such weapons were used on the the other three hijacked flights. Although knives with blades less than four inches (about 10 cm) in length were allowed in the passenger cabin prior to 9/11, knives of any length have since joined a long list of items banned from the passenger cabin.

The TSA, which was formed after 9/11, has numerous procedures in place to prevent knives, box cutters, and other contraband from entering the secure area of the airport. No security procedure is perfect, and clearly in this case the procedures did not work. Ann Davis, a spokesperson for TSA, stated that three screeners will be disciplined and given remedial training for failing to spot the box cutters. She did not mention if TSA also considered changing any of their current procedures. If procedures are changed, it is unlikely that the public will be notified, unless of course TSA accidentally releases sensitive security information to the general public, as they did in late 2009, when they released for public review a report on security procedures without completely deleting the most sensitive security information.

Why box cutters are not a big deal
While box cutters can certainly be used as a weapon, and keeping them off airplanes is a good idea, the fact that some box cutters accidentally ended up on the jetBlue flight did not expose passengers to any danger because there was no plot by any individual or group to cause harm to the aircraft or its occupants. There are many other reasons why the presence of box cutters should not be of great concern to the flying public:

• Knives and other potential weapons are readily available in the airport terminal or allowed on board by TSA: While the TSA thoroughly screens any individual who wants to access the secure area of an airport terminal, there are many items that the TSA allows in the passenger cabin of aircraft or that are available in the terminal that could be used as weapons. Items which are currently allowed in the passenger cabin include matches, cigarette lighters, screwdrivers that are shorter than seven inches (18 cm) long, and sharp pointed scissors less than four inches (10 cm) long. Also, while passengers and flight crews may be prohibited from taking knives into the secure area of an airport terminal, the restaurants, bars, and other eating establishments in the secure area of an airport will likely have knives and many other potential weapons at hand.
  
  
• Additional layers of security added after 9/11: In addition to hardened cockpit doors, and updated flight crew and cabin crew procedures for preventing or dealing with attempted hijackings, some flight may also have armed federal air marshals or armed flight crew members.
  
  
• Passengers more likely to confront a hijacker: Prior to 9/11, hijackers may have had many motivations for taking control of an aircraft, including killing passengers or taking them as hostages, but with rare exceptions like the 1987 hijacking of a Pacific Southwest Airlines airliner, forcing the aircraft to crash was not a goal. In the pre-9/11 era, passengers and crews would comply with hijacker demands, rather than attempting to intervene. Since 9/11, passengers have consistently demonstrated a willingness to immediately confront hijackers, including Richard Ried (the Shoe Bomber), who attempted to set off an explosive on an American Airlines flight in December 2001, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the Underwear Bomber), who attempted to set off a bomb on a Northwest Airlines flight in December 2009.
  
  
• TSA security procedures are not designed to be 100% effective: As last year's public outcry over invasive TSA search procedures illustrated, the TSA has to balance the need to have a secure air transportation system with the need to have procedures that reduce risks from hijacking and sabotage, while at the same time not exposing air travelers to other kinds of unacceptable risks, including invasions of privacy and exposure to radiation from full-body scanners. In the recent jetBlue incident, the box cutters in the carry on bag were not spotted by either the screening devices used for carry on bags or by the TSA screeners who presumably should have searched the bag and found the box cutters. Even after additional training, there is no guarantee that those screeners, or any other airport screening professional, will be able to find every banned item.

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Bonus Video - Space Shuttle launch seen from airliner
Below is a video of Space Shuttle Discovery's final launch (STS-133) on 24 February 2011. This has no bearing on any airline safety or security issue, this is just plain fun to watch. Please enjoy.

Photo: Duke Green
Video: NeilMonday

Another Perspective on the Risk of Airline Bombings

Since 2001, terror events, including attempted bombings, have been a serious concern for passengers and governments around the world. While high profile terror events of all kinds have been a concern, the probability of a bombing event involving a US airliner or a flight departing or arriving from the US hasn't seen any major changes since 1960.

Terror Events in the Previous Decade
Nate Silver, better know as the person behind the political polling site FiveThirtyEight.com, ran an article that used data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to evaluate the risk of a terrorist attack on airliners that either departed from the US or had a US destination.

Looking over the ten year period from 2000-2009, Silver identified six attempted terror-related events on board these airline flights, including the four planes hijacked on 9/11, the December 2001 attempted bombing of an American Airlines 767 by convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, and the January 2009 attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines A330 by alleged underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Odds of Being a Terror Victim
Silver reviewed BTS records and estimated that there were 99.3 million commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States, or one terrorist incident per 16.6 million departures.

He further estimated that excluding crew members, bombers and hijackers, there were 674 passengers on those six flights on which these incidents occurred, compared with seven million estimated passenger enplanements during that decade, giving the probability of being on a given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident of about 1 in 10.4 million. He contrasts this risk with the 1 in 500,000 chance of being struck by lightning.

Odds of Being a Bombing Victim
If you only look at the bombing events in there previous decade, there were two, including last month's attempt on Northwest Airlines and the 2001 show bombing event. Using Nate Silver's numbers, the rate of bombing events on US airliners from 2000 to 2009 was 1 in 31.2 million departures.

Previous US Bombing Events
Nate Sliver only looked at events during the previous decade. AirSafe.com has tracked US bombing attempts going back to the 1950s, and found that in the four decades from 1960 to 1999, there were eight events on US airliners that involved a bombing attempt or a successful bombing, with seven involving passenger fatalities. This averaged two per decade, compared with the six in the decades of the 1990s. However, the average number of flights was lower during this 40-year period. According to BTS data, there were about 311.6 million flights during this four decade period, which means the rate of bombing attempts from 1960-1999 was 1 per 39 million flights, compared to 1 per 31.2 million flights for 2000-2009.

How These Two Periods Compare
One of the things that stand out with the events from 1960-1999 was that only six of the bombing events involved a deliberate attempt by individuals or groups that could be associated with terrorism. If only those six are counted, then the rate for the 1960-1999 period drops to 1 in 59.1 million flights, roughly half the risk of the 2000-2009 period.

Does this mean that the risk of bomb related terrorism has doubled in the previous decade? Maybe. However, if the alleged underwear bomber had waited another week and attempted a bombing on January 1st, the 2000-2009 rate would have been 1 in 64.4 million flights, even less than the terror-related bombing rate for 1960-1999.