I agree with you. Acts of terrorism are black swan events. Question is do we as humanity have the stomach to not act on low probability cues and eat the one off consequences. I don't think we do.

I think the only way to play this is to ensure that terrorism against us continues to be only rare, unorganised black swans and not an act of any organized and motivated entity.

Coming back to this case. Say this was an operational error by incompetent terrorists. The pilot reports the observation but does nothing. The bomb goes off. Now the pilot and the airlines are made a bunch of scapegoats. They are declared professionally incompetent and insurance cover is denied to their family.

I can well imagine current administration doing exactly that, throwing the pilot and the crew under the bus. The 911 first responders were and they weren't even in a position to prevent it. Maybe the pilot and crew can imagine that too and in that case they took a rational decision.

Do not forget that this

https://youtu.be/_uYpDC3SRpM?si=lOWfqPEPCxTGu_Vj (Jon Stewart to the Congress for first responders)

is the society we live in.