The latest terrorist attack on air travel, on the Northwest Airlines plane from Amsterdam to Detroit, raises the question as to why al-Qaeda keeps focusing on this particular type of target.
After all there must be easier options – sporting venues, concerts, theatres for instance – all of which offer the prospect of high numbers of casualties with minimal security. Attacks on venues like these would indeed cause chaos and fear, but they would not have the same economic impact.
There are approximately 50,000 commercial flights in the world each day. Assuming a meagre average of 100 passengers per flight that means half a million people in the air on any one day.
Every time there is an attack, even a failed attack, it has immense implications. Airport security across the world is reviewed and increased. This means additional costs for airlines and airports. And it means further delays and inconvenience for passengers. We often spend more time hanging around in airports than we do in the air – check in three hours before your flight, taken your shoes, belts and other things off when you go through security, undergo pat down or x-ray scanning – and we are still not sure that a potential terrorist has been spotted.
The terrorists are getting cleverer. Explosives in shoes, in underwear, inside bodies, in bottles, disguised as – what next?
And even when you go through security you can go and buy lots of inflammable alcohol to take on board to mix with – whatever innocent-looking substance is allowed. How long can it be before no hand luggage is allowed?
So attacks on air travel, even these failed attacks, have an enormous financial and social impact on the 1.8 billion or so annual air passengers, on airlines, airports, airport workers, insurance companies, passengers and, of course, governments.
Despite worries over global warning air travel continues to grow. Commerce needs it. Consumers demand it. And in the circumstances al-Qaeda probably knows exactly what it is doing.
After all, as the IRA said after the Brighton bombing: “Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.”