[kube-system]

4. A normal level of risk aversion in one of the most risk averse industries

If airlines ignored every threat that was “probably not” a real threat, they’d ignore all of them. It’s better to inconvenience a few thousand passengers than it is to kill a few hundred.

[Haven880]

How many threats did actually turn out to be real to date? I couldn't find this being published. But how many threats did happen without any indication (only after the perpetrators tell). I can easily recalled maybe 3-4 incidents. So the issue here is do knowing threats really help?

[kube-system]

You only hear the edge cases in the news. There are tens of thousands of incidents of unruly passengers some of which are just threats and some are actual violence.

But also, just because someone is making what could be perceived as a threat doesn’t mean it won’t escalate, which is why threats are taken seriously even if we don’t know whether something is guaranteed to go wrong. You don’t want a crazy person making bomb threats on a flight even if they don’t have a bomb, because they can inflict other issues while trapped in a metal tube at cruising altitude.

https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/pressroom/fact-sheet...

[wat10000]

The industry is usually smarter than this.

For example, there are many pieces of equipment that can be broken and they’ll still fly, because it’s not essential or there’s enough redundancy.

Child safety seats are not required even though they’d save lives, because the extra hassle and expense would cause some parents to drive instead, which is much more dangerous, leading to more overall deaths.

Normally the decisions are quite sensible. But the moment any “terrorism” enters the picture it all goes out the window.

[kube-system]

All of those have the luxury of risk evaluation in advance

[f33d5173]

No they wouldn't. A fundamental part of a threat is to make it very clear that there's a threat. The reason you threaten is to get some concession, otherwise you wouldn't bother threatening.

[kube-system]

This is at odds with basically every major security incident postmortem in recent history.

Most security failures happen when people wait to take something seriously until it is “very clear” that something is wrong.

We have the luxury of hindsight while reading this article but listen to the tapes of any security failures and you’ll find it painfully obvious that the most common issue is that people don’t do anything until it’s too late.

[f33d5173]

That has nothing to do with what we're talking about. We're discussing threats. Serious threats are made seriously.

[kube-system]

The definition of threat that the rest of us are using, and the one that is relevant to airline security is:

"An indication of impending danger or harm."

Not "An expression of an intention to inflict pain, harm, or punishment."

Using the second definition in this context is absolutely bonkers -- a threat actor doesn't have to make a first-person expression of threat to be a threat.

A "security threat" refers to the former -- the situation.

It's also important to note that the situation was not taken seriously just because of the bluetooth device name -- but because it was not turned off even after all of the passengers were instructed to turn off all of their bluetooth devices. They were well aware that people are just stupid sometimes, but didn't take it seriously until it was done in defiance of crew commands.

[stefan_]

You don't have your head quite on, they had already taken off!

[kube-system]

Yeah, that’s how diversions work?

[basilikum]

There was literally no threat.

[victorbjorklund]

They did not know if it was a threat or not. Hindsight is everything.

[Skunkleton]

In the simplest possible terms: this is total bullshit security theatre. At no point has there ever been a bomb or even a bomb threat carried out via usb device names. There is absolutely no reason to even look at the names of Bluetooth devices on a flight.

[umanwizard]

A normal level of risk aversion? Are you being serious? They inconvenienced a few thousand passengers to save zero.

[kube-system]

Without testing the null hypothesis that is not possible to determine. There doesn’t have to be an actual bomb for an unruly passenger to inflict injuries or death.