I find it more likely that terrorists don't think it's worth doing in the first place, security or no. Killing a few dozen people in mid-air might startle a bunch of people on the ground and ground a few flights for a while, but it doesn't actually accomplish anything. The only people that would actually do that are mentally-unbalanced, suicidal people who are just trying to kill themselves in the most spectacular way they can; i.e., not a terrorist.
I think "terrorists" of the "trying to kill us all" variety are trying to bring forward some kind of message or dispense some kind of "justice" under their belief system. To achieve any of that with violence requires there to be an intense, sustained effect on the public and a way to link it back to their concept of justice. The 9/11 attacks accomplished that, but the shoe bomber and underwear bombers wouldn't have if they had succeeded. Their explosive charges were too small and too incompetently assembled to cause the kind of mass panic that "terrorists" are after.
Instead, we have a different breed of terrorists: the "keeping you scared because it benefits them directly" terrorists. The TSA and Homeland Security. The true terrorists in this plot. Keeping people afraid of some vague, non-specific threat because it profits them and those they support.
I think "terrorists" of the "trying to kill us all" variety are trying to bring forward some kind of message or dispense some kind of "justice" under their belief system. To achieve any of that with violence requires there to be an intense, sustained effect on the public and a way to link it back to their concept of justice. The 9/11 attacks accomplished that, but the shoe bomber and underwear bombers wouldn't have if they had succeeded. Their explosive charges were too small and too incompetently assembled to cause the kind of mass panic that "terrorists" are after.
Instead, we have a different breed of terrorists: the "keeping you scared because it benefits them directly" terrorists. The TSA and Homeland Security. The true terrorists in this plot. Keeping people afraid of some vague, non-specific threat because it profits them and those they support.