At this point, not all the details are established, and we are still at the stage where some news reports will turn out to be incorrect. It does appear that the Nigerian suspect,Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, 23, is a student at University College of London and according to Dutch authorities, was holding a valid US visa in his passport when he transited at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport en route to Detroit from Lagos, Nigeria. As we speak, his residence in West London is being searched by British authorities.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6890642/Detroit-terror-attack-police-search-London-home-of-Nigerian-suspect.html
As far as what the material he was trying to detonate, that is not yet been reported, and as far as his post-arrest statements about working for al-Qaeda, that is yet to be corroborated. There are reports that he was on some sort of terror watch list but not on a "no-fly" list.
This is speculation now, but my memories of Schiphol Airport back in decades of the 1970s and 80s, when it was a hub of heroin smuggling, was that you could walk an elephant through the place and nobody would notice. That is probably not true now in the age of world-wide terror directed specifically at the West (and Israel). At any rate, Mutallab was in transit and obviously didn't pass through as stringent a security check as if he had been originating his travel there. He began his travel in Lagos, where the security is apparently not so tough.
One immediate question that must be addressed is whether Mutallab was actually on a watch list, and if so, why not the "no-fly" list. According to procedure, passenger lists are checked by US authorities before the flight leaves Europe. Similarly, if he is on a watch-list, how did he get a US visa?
We will know a lot more in the days ahead, but if you thought it was safe to fly again, this is a wake-up call. It is clear though that since 9-11, the best sky marshalls are the passengers who reacted when they saw something wrong.
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