Originally Posted by d*d

Think you underestimate the phychological aspect, especially since everyone is pretty much paralysed with fear by the thought of terrorists anyway.
All it'd take is a couple of guys with these 'everyday objects' to grab a hostess put a siccor blade to her throat drawing blood shouting in arabic and broken english telling everyone that she and they will be killed unless they cooperate, you'd have a plane of pretty paniked, cooperative hostages.

and I don't want to hear any 'well if I was there i'd piledrive his ass' crap.

I think the measures were there more to fuel the fear and to make it look as though preventative actions were being taken. Certainly ban weapons - guns knives etc, that makes sense anywhere as far as I'm concerned.