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Before getting on to the bigger stuff, let's talk about doors for a minute -- cockpit doors. "One point that never gets made in discussions about post-9/11 air safety," posted a reader in response to last week's column about Sept. 11 and security, "is that of secure cockpit doors."

As most fliers are aware, cockpit entry doors, once flimsy and relatively easy to breach, were redesigned in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks. I’m not at liberty to discuss the specs of this redesign, but everybody knows they are heavily armored. "Even if a terrorist somehow manages to bring a sharp object on board," the reader continued, "or fashions one in flight, he will not be able to gain access to the cockpit."

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