Comment Re:No he didn't (Score 3, Interesting) 217
Sorry to burst your buble. Right next door, in Mexico, with a much more relaxed airport security, never had an airplane hijacked... Until 2009, years after the FAA imposed flight restrictions went into effect(1).
On the other hand, in mainland China, there was an attempted hijack in 2012!
If airport security was a solution to plane hijacking, why would a country without any security (Mexico) not suffer from it and a paranoid state (China) recently had to deal with it?
If you recall, in the past (60's-80's) U.S. planes were hijacked to Havana; in the 90's the trend was reversed: Cuban planes were hijacked and taken to the U.S. Which brings the question again, if the totalitarian Cuban police was unable to stop the hijackings, why should it work in the U.S.?
Now see the perverse incentives: a flight taken to Havana was heralded as taken by "people's heros" and gave a lot of cred in certain circles; turn the coin and see the other face: hijacking a Cuban plane and taking it into the U.S. will NOT land you in jail; it will grant you political asylum!
(1) FAA rules apply to all flights landing on the U.S. even if they originated elsewhere. There used to be smoking flights to/from the U.S. (Air France, Mexicana, TACA, etc.) until the FAA ruled that any flights originating or landing in the U.S. had to be non-smoking, regardless of the carrier's flag. The same was applied to security: no flight bound to the U.S. is allowed to land if there are not TSA-like security measures in the originating country . So, in effect, the FAA and TSA determine what security measures are taken on airports as distant as Buenos Aires.