[geeks] Dos and similar games

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Dan Duncan <dand at pcisys.net>
>Date: 2006/08/15 Tue PM 04:26:28 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Dos and similar games

>On Tue, 15 Aug 2006, Joshua Boyd wrote:
>> I think the real reason that they make the sky marshals plain clothes
>> here is so that the constituants won't notice to complain when the sky
>> marshalls stop being present.
>
>It's also cheaper than having to hire enough of them to cover every flight.

There are THOUSANDS of flights, if you required a Sky Marshal on each flight, it would amount to a .5% tax on the airline's revenues, if you assume the average plane holds 200 passengers (a number I made up becuase the math was easy). To take .5% "off the top" would be a serious blow to the airline industry.

If you decided to manage which flights got Sky Marshals (say, only flights where the plane is of a certain size, trip of a certain duration, or the amount of fuel carried on the flight), then you would simply be telling the "bad guys" which flight to go after - the ones on the certain planes, the ones that are under some certain time limint, or that carry less than a certain amount of fuel...

Lionel