Air Marshals and the TSA are both pointless jobs programs and security theater. The problem of hijackers was solved in the morning of 2001/9/11 when the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 fought back against the hijackers. Since then, there have been numerous cases of passengers beating the shit out of any jackass trying to start trouble on a flight.
Locked cabin doors are also good. Metal detectors at airports would be fine, if they were staffed by private security contractors rather than the unaccountable TSA. Also their xray backscatter machines are pointless, their paranoia about shoes is pointless, and their insane paranoia about water-bottles is pointless. Other countries don't have these things, and things are fine for them. By all means have people walk through a metal detector to stop carryon handguns, but the rest of this crap is completely pointless.
In my experience, when a flight is international then the checks end up being pretty similar to what you see with the TSA in an American airport. When they are regional then there's nothing happening.
(granted, that was dealing with a UK->US and US->UK flights)
First, regional and international flights always been in the same terminal and therefor the same check for me.
International...depends on a country:
Vietnam spent more time looking at my passport then looking at my luggage (actually didn't look at all, was talking to someone and not looking at the monitor).
Korea - leave everything in a bag, leave your shoes, easy-breezy.
Japan - the same as Korea.
Germany/Spain - was more worried that: I have place to say and plane ticket back and that I will be let into the US on my way back that what was in my bags.
Mexico - again, more time spent on documents than my bags, but I was subject to random search at the gate once...unpleasant.
In fact, even in the US TSA checks aren't the same: some airports let you leave everything in a bag, others will bitch about tiny wireless headphones left in a bag. Anyway, I'd say TSA will have the most ridiculous checks and number of people who have no idea how to go through TSA.
AFAIK, depending on the destination, the airline and other parameters, there will be air marshals. Contrary to the US, these are „normal“ special police, and they won’t do this on a regularly basis.
I recently went from North America -> Africa via Europe. I do have global entry, but i found the CDG experience to be more onerous than the one I have domestically in the US.
I firmly believe that there was not another 9/11-style attack because 9/11 didn't do shit of what the bad guys wanted. Simply, it is not cost-effective. I find it very hard to believe that the security theater of the TSA would have any chance of denying well-financed and trained attackers.
Yeah, it probably works against the stupid kind of kidnappers from the '70s ("I want 1 million dollars in non-marked notes, refuel and want to go to Havana, and while we're at it, I want my girlfriend who is in jail because of drug charges, to be released and brought to this plane"), but at what cost?
That’s the way I see it. Give the people the means and expectation to protect themselves in a dangerous situation and the rest of the problem solves itself.
United Airlines Flight 93 crashed and everyone on board died. That does not seem like a problem solved type of situation to me.
The TSA is far more accountable than private security contractors. In fact I really like the TSA, those security checks became far more civil and professional and pleasant after the TSA came in.
As far as private security contractors -- this is what usually happens when they hire them for airport security. Because airport security is sinecure ... there is no competition or option, it is treated as a way to extract the most money by a well connected businessman. A well connected businessman will get the contract, and then attempt to extract as much value from it by spending the minimum amount possible on salaries. So all the "private security contractors" will be minimum wage jobs.
But the airport is a terrible place to work for a minimum wage worker. Travel to and from the airport is usually difficult and expensive, and parking is very expensive. In fact parking is usually more expensive per hour than the minimum wage. So most minimum wage workers avoid airport jobs.
So who takes these jobs? Minimum wage workers that cannot find any other minimum wage jobs. These end up being mostly ex-cons. So you get the situation that ex-cons provide security for one of the most vulnerable parts of our transportation infrastructure. This was the case pre 9/11 and it is one of the reasons why none of the hijackers had any trouble smuggling knives on their flights.
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.
A private contractor would not have sovereign immunity, so you can sue them without the government's assent. They would not receive special legal protections, like the signs the TSA put up threatening you with steep fines if you "verbally abuse" the TSA workers (even police in America don't receive such protection against verbal abuse, but apparently TSA workers do.) If they consistently understaff their security checkpoint, as the TSA routinely does during periods of anticipated heavy travel, the airport could fire them and hire another contractor who can do the job properly.
Airport security in America used to be done by private contractors. The TSA didn't exist before 2001. And before 2001, airport security checkpoints generally ran much smoother and faster than the TSA.
Actually airport security in America was much much worse before 9/11. I remember it well. It was mostly done by ex-cons in minimum wage jobs (see my other post in this thread), it was far more understaffed.
The only "positive" thing about security before 9/11 is that those private contractors were paid to let as many people through as possible for the least amount of labor possible so they were not very serious with the security. So thats why some people remember things running "smoother". But it was definitely not safer. Remember, there were 19 9/11 hijackers, and not one of them had any problems bringing a knife on board.
Point me to one case where anyone has successfully sued a private airport screening contractor for damages resulting from terrorism? That does not happen. It would be an interesting economic experiment if airport screening companies were made liable for the acts of people they erroneously let in, and were forced to buy insurance to cover for these liabilities. I would expect airport screenings by private contractors to get much more aggressive than the TSA then. But currently this is not the case.
They didn't bring knives, they brought box cutters, because those private security groups were actually okay at screening things like knives.
Meanwhile, the modern TSA fails something like 90% of their own tests, in terms of letting stuff through. Many people who every-day carry stuff like knives talk about forgetting to remove their pocket knife, and getting it through TSA accidentally.
I don't think an ordinary pocket knife was prohibited pre 9/11 anyway. I used to carry a little "Swiss Army Knife" everywhere and never recall issues at airport security (though I didn't then and still don't fly much).
In the mid-00s I had a Leatherman multitool with a knife. I was constantly forgetting to take it out of my pocket before going to the airport, and never once did the (then-fairly-new TSA) even mention it, let alone do anything about it.
I finally lost it in 2008 or so when a bouncer at a club wouldn't let me in with it (and I had parked quite a ways away and waited in line for too long for me to consider going back to put it in the car). So... nightclub bouncers are more effective at screening weapons than the TSA.
These have 150 confirmed kills [1], and another 239 suspected kills [2]. They also weigh a lot, so a lot of excessive fuel is burnt because of them every day. They also sometimes break, causing delayed and cancelled flights.
The problem on 9/11 wasn't the crashing of the plane, people accept risk in transport -- the deadliest means of transport in the US in 2001 was an automobile -- 10 times deadlier than being a passenger on a plane. The problem was the using the plane as a weapon.
car - 4600 billion pax miles, 42,000 deaths, 1 per 100 million miles
plane - 500 billion pax miles, 246 deaths of airline travellers on 9/11, 265 from Queens, about 1 per 1 billion miles
Locked cabin doors are also good. Metal detectors at airports would be fine, if they were staffed by private security contractors rather than the unaccountable TSA. Also their xray backscatter machines are pointless, their paranoia about shoes is pointless, and their insane paranoia about water-bottles is pointless. Other countries don't have these things, and things are fine for them. By all means have people walk through a metal detector to stop carryon handguns, but the rest of this crap is completely pointless.