How The Lockerbie Bombing Changed Airport Baggage Screening Forever

On December 21, 1988, Pan American World Airways Flight 103 was destroyed over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 people on the ground. The attack exposed a weakness that was especially difficult to address – a bomb could be placed inside checked baggage and enter the aircraft without the passenger carrying it ever passing through the most visible layers of airport security. In the aftermath, aviation authorities began treating checked baggage as a security problem in its own right rather than simply as property that needed to reach the aircraft.