Approximately $50 billion is spent annually world-wide in the quest to deter or disrupt terrorist attacks to aviation, significant expenditures that have rarely been subject to systematic cost–benefit or risk analysis. This chapter applies that approach, assessing the risks, costs, and benefits of security measures designed to disrupt terrorist hijackings of airliners assuming terrorists arrive at the airport undeterred and undetected. Under those conditions, existing security measures reduce the risk of a terrorist success by over 88%. Another security measure could be added to the existing array: secondary flight deck barriers, lightweight devices that are easy to deploy and stow, installed between the passenger cabin and the cockpit door to block access to the flight deck whenever the cockpit door is opened in flight. These barriers are highly cost-effective and raise total risk reduction to over 96%. The benefit-to-cost ratio of the measure is high at 5.1, and it remains cost effective even if risk reduction is halved and costs are doubled. On the other hand the expensive Federal Air Marshal Service fails a cost–benefit analysis, whereas the Federal Flight Deck Officer program proves to be cost-effective.


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    Title :

    Aviation Resilience to Terrorist Hijackings


    Additional title:

    Springer Tracts in Civil Engineering


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2021-12-17


    Size :

    23 pages





    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English