In terms of menace potential, any private plane will lose to a van full of fertilizer and a baddie intent on causing destruction. It's a matter of scale.

Little planes, like this one [1] just don't do damage on the same scale as airliners.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack

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woodruffw 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Most private planes taking off from commercial airports (the ones where TSA generally operates) are much larger than a Piper Dakota.

(But regardless, it’s not clear that the TSA is even performing that kind of calculus.)

	▲	schmookeeg 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		A G650 still loses to a motivated U-haul. :) No argument though, just saying it's a hard problem, and the scaling issue makes it somewhat awkward to deploy security resources in proportion to the threat. I don't have a solution. I'm not exactly thrilled with the current setup, but I try to stay quiet since I can't think of anything better.

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AlotOfReading 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Government building codes already anticipate the "van full of fertilizer" attack, as a result of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Federal building security is a separate matter though, with its own agency called FPS that predates DHS and TSA by decades.

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paradox460 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What about a private plane full of anfo