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Introduction
At just over 100 years old, motorised air transportation is a thoroughly modern phenomenon. It was less than 30 years after the invention of powered flight that one of the first reported acts of air piracy occurred in 1931 with a Peruvian aircraft hijacked by revolutionaries wanting to drop propaganda leaflets (Clarke and Newman, 2006; Sweet, 2009).
From this first incident until today the methods of attacking commercial aircraft have evolved. These evolutionary steps in preferred attack modes are not random events, rather they directly reflect the 'action-response-reaction' relationship existing between prospective attackers and assigned defenders. Historically, aviation security measures have been reactive ; they are developed or adapted to meet each new threat only after manifestation as either a planned or actual attack. In turn, each new successful security measure may cause attackers to either desist or to modify their approach, potentially affording defenders a period of respite (Clarke and Newman, 2006).
During the 1970s, attackers were successfully attacking planes by smuggling weapons and explosives into the aircraft cabin via carry-on luggage. Enhanced pre-flight passenger screening through the introduction of metal detectors and the X-raying of carry-on luggage significantly reduced incident numbers by the end of the 1970s. In response, attackers adapted during the 1980s by hiding explosives in checked luggage. This in turn was countered by the enforcement of positive passenger bag match procedures to remove the checked baggage of passengers who do not board their flights and the development of X-ray technologies to scan checked luggage. Again incident numbers were successfully reduced. In response attackers adopted a new attack method put into practice on 11 September 2001 (9/11). On this day, four US carriers were hijacked by suicide bombers who treated the planes themselves as flying bombs, resulting in almost 3000 deaths. Carried out by the al Qaeda terrorist network, these attacks were successfully perpetrated using nothing more sophisticated than knives and box cutters.1 Defenders responded with cockpit door hardening, increased monitoring of flight schools and greater pre-flight passenger screening. To date there has been no successful repeat of this style of attack (Sweet, 2009; Elias, 2010). This brings us to the status quo today and the focus of our study; namely, the style of attacks experienced since 9/11...