> Additionally, you are subjected to baggage and carry-on inspection, as well as body inspection and metal detection, etc. There are cameras everywhere, monitoring and recording everything
Well, yeah, all of that presents a privacy problem. Automation is taking it a step further, but if I had my way boarding a plane would be like boarding a train or bus. I could concede a fast-moving checkpoint that does some best-effort scanning for firearms and blades or whatever as people walk through a gate, provided the data is verifiably shredded as soon as scanning is complete. This safety paranoia is not borne of genuine danger. People walk into more crowded and critical areas than planes with firearms all the time in the US. The only thing stopping frequent mass-casualty deaths is that most people don't want to kill a ton of other people indiscriminately, not the TSA.
Securing the cockpit doors on planes is a good idea though.
Ironically what you describe was air travel in the 1980s-1990s, despite several high profile airline hijackings.
The hijackings didn’t make people go crazy.
Unticketed passengers even could walk up to the gate.
Identification wasn’t even checked while boarding — just a ticket was required.
How far we’ve fallen…
Identification often isn't ever checked when flying within Europe _today_. They just check your ticket.
That said you're certainly not getting near any gates without a ticket in Europe these days either.
>Securing the cockpit doors on planes is a good idea though.
Unless your pilot is having a particularly bad day.
I did recently see a video of a pilot that proposed to his girlfriend as she boarded his plane.
I bet all the passengers were thinking "Please, please say 'yes'", and were overly-happy both for the newly-engaged couple, and more for themselves that she did.
No, I don't have an answer to the door problem.
Eh, vetting pilots rigorously seems like it would 99% solve this. That and having more than one pilot in the cockpit makes rogue situations vanishingly unlikely, and that's the best you can do in any safety situation.