From Lockerbie to Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab (Assessing the Destruction of Civilian Aircrafts by Terrorism). Transatlantic Security Paper N.1–April 2010

Data published by the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.) in its "Annual report on the criminal acts against civil aviation" indicates that in the year 1960, there have been fifteen attacks on board planes leaving 286 dead; 44 in the year 1970 with 650 dead (mostly hijackings); and 26 in the 1980s leaving 1207 dead. In the 1970s, the record is established by the year 1976 (168 dead).The three years - 1985 (390), 1988 (287), and 1989 (278) - were more deadly than the 1960s all together. These casualties were largely provoked by IEDs. Since the end of 1980 - the deadliest decade, with the exception of September 11, 2001 -, it is however a rare practice. The reasons for the decline in big and politically motivated hijackings were varied. One could have been the improvement of the effectiveness of the safety response by States, airports and companies. The improvised explosive device (I.E.D.) posed a serious threat to the civil aviation industry in the 1980s. Since the 1990s, the jihadi networks have regularly tried to target aircrafts using various types of IEDs.

The European Power Hierarchy, Member State Trust, and Public Support for the Common Security and Defense Policy. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 15 No. 2, August 2015

Existing studies focus on overall support for European integration while less work has been done on explaining public opinion on specific policy areas, such as the development of the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). We hypothesize that the probability of supporting a CSDP increases with greater levels of trust in the European Union member states, most notably the more powerful members. This variable is critical since integration’s development is influenced strongly by, and dependent on, the resources of the relatively more powerful European member states. Binary logistic regression analyses using pooled repeated cross-sectional data from the Eurobarometer surveys conducted from 1992 to 1997 among individuals of 11 member states largely support these claims.