It would probably cost less money and man-years of life to let every once in awhile some dumb terrorist blow up the plane while fruitlessly trying to access the locked cockpit to convince them to bring it to a juicier target, than it costs to put a gazillion people in long lines, tax the shit out of them for DHS (including the murderous ICE agency), and put them through security theater while also costs many many many man-lives of time by TSA agents.
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Most people are not suggesting getting rid of security at airports. They are recommending getting rid of DHS and government employees performing security at the airport.
The airlines themselves will search for explosives if it is affecting their bottom line, although I do suspect they will do a worse job because they won't be using the DHSs budget but rather some maxima on ROI. Except with a guy who can't summarily legally steal your shit, put you in a concentration camp, and ship you off to CECOT. Use their paranoia of being sued against them, and then their security will not be paranoid enough to call the cops unless there is an actual bomb and not just some brown guy that renewed his visa 5 days late.
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>You realize you’re suggesting something that absolutely no country in the world does as far as I know.
Intrastate flights in Alaska don't, at least through all the areas of the state I've been in (Including Fairbanks). Nothing. Not even a metal detector. I'm sure a few people have died as a result but it still likely saves net lives not to have security once you add up the man-years of time cost in security and earning the money to pay for it. (Note if you leaving Alaska you then do have to go in a different line and clear security)
Most people don't know it though, because as it turns out having zero security even in a place where every crazed man has a gun is not much a problem. Someone that wants to kill people can kill more people faster and eliminate more valuable targets elsewhere than getting on an airplane with a locked cockpit that can't be steered into a juicier target. It just turns out the security thesis is largely a flawed one.
When you add it all up locked cockpits plus passengers fighting back are pretty much all it takes to turn the game theory into airplanes not being the weakest link. Sure terrorists could get on a plane with a bomb but the best they can do is blow up a single airplane, they could have done way more than that on the ground so it doesn't make sense given their relative options.
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>So mothballed knows more about costs benefits of security than the entire world?
Apparently I only know as much as the State of Alaska, who by far have the best airline experience of anywhere I've been. Though I'm told a few regional airlines in the South don't do security either (one guy told me a story of the pilot handing him his gun back after he boarded), though I'm not sure how they get away with it, since AFAIK it's required on interstate flights. And of course chartered flights, which generally don't require security either.
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>How exactly would a pilot have the gun that TSA took from him?
"Checked" Luggage is accessible from the cabin in some smaller prop planes. I couldn't tell you which security they used. The story I got was the pilot for whatever reason had occasion to look at the luggage (tiny plane and weight distribution concerns? I'm not a pilot) and noticed it was a gun case and just handed it back to the passenger. Could be a fake story, though I've heard a few things like this about regional airlines before, I've only personally seen zero weapons controls on intrastate Alaskan flights (which FWIW often land in fairly remote areas where you could be confronted by a bear straight out of the dingy airport).
