I don’t think so. Spacecraft, and maybe military aircraft, use explosive bolts and things like that; I imagine a fighter jet might use explosive charges to separate the canopy during an emergency ejection. But I’m pretty sure there are no little daubs of plastic explosive built into a 747–it would upset the FAA. Of course there’s a safety/anti-terrorist idea for you–three or four hundred separate ejector seats, plus a destruct charge so the airline’s Range Safety Officer could detonate the plane after the passengers all bailed out, to prevent it from being crashed into anything. Of course, it’s easy to imagine ways all this could backfire, like if the terrorists got hold of the command code to self-destruct the plane, so we’d have to have a dramatic 2-minute countdown complete with backwards-counting red LED display and Synthetic Female Computer Voice as the heroic New York City beat cop who happens to be a passenger aboard races to override the self-destruct sequence before the plane is blown up right above the day-care center…
I heard a story once (I think I read it in “Stuff” magazine, so take this with a grain of salt, I guess) about an attempted plane hijacking that was foiled when the pilot put the plane into a deep dive, knocking down the hijacker.
Do you think after his heroics, the Commissioner will give him back his badge?
Bing Bong!
“Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking; we would like to advise everybody except the terrorists to return to their seats and securely fasten their safety belts”
“In the event of a loss in cabin pressure, could all terrorists please make their way calmly to the nearest door. Do not inflate your lifejacket before leaving the plane, as to do so may impede your exit.”
Obviously if the idea is to suck the guys out of the plane then the idea sucks.
Also the absoultly no access to the cockpit would be really bad if a terrorist some how stowed away while the plane was on the ground. Then nobody could try and help the pilots.
My idea is very simple.
No carry on luggage, everything is checked in. Everyone flies naked. Maybe they could pass out those little paper smocks the hospitals used to use for the more modest among us.
There would be no way for anyone to carry any kind of weapon on the plane (except for the well endowed I suppose), and people might just be too embarrassed to try anything.
Just an idea. I don’t think I’d use the smock…I’d let it all hang out, look at it. :eek:
I don’t doubt it. In fact, the hijackers of United Flight 93 apparently did the same thing in an effort to ward off the passengers attack on them, before the plane crashed either accidentally or because the terrorists felt they couldn’t hold out long enough to complete their attack.
I’m aware that this wouldn’t be a practical retrofit for many current aircraft, but I don’t think there’d be any real obstacle to designing it into new aircraft, other than eating up a couple seats of passenger capacity.
I think the status of the pilot as “authority figure” over the passengers is mere tradition at this point, and an outmoded one. I believe the traditional model on the passenger railroads was for the chief Conductor to be “in charge” of the train, and if the cockpit crew were as inaccessible as a railroad’s engine crew, I would expect the senior Fight Attendant to similarly be “in charge” of the passengers. Arguably, an overt Sky Marshall could also handle such things as diciplining unruly passengers, but there are advantages to keeping the Sky Marshall undercover as well, so I think the former approach would be preferable.
The Sioux City example is a legitimate one. As I recall, a hydraulic failure had made the plane so difficult to maneuver that the passenger was recruited to operate the throttles and flaps, leaving the pilot and co-pilot free to use all four hands to wrestle with the controls. While I’m not sure how many similar instances may have occurred, I’m inclined to assume they’re extremely rare in the absence of data to the contrary. Ultimately it would come down to an issue of where the risks lie statistically speaking, and which would save more lives, insulating the cockpit from attack, or leaving open the option of recruiting “extra hands” for the cockpit if necessary.
As indicated earlier, I have mixed feelings about arming the flight crew, inasmuch as it might encourage them to intervene against threats to the passengers, thus distracting them from their primary responsibility and possibly compromising the security of the cockpit unnecessarily. On balance, it’s probably the right thing to implement currently, as certainly Sky Marshalls are. As a practical matter, I think the risk of a rerun of 9/11 is vastly reduced simply because passengers and crew will no longer assume that submitting to hijackers is the most prudent course of action. Attacks on the cockpit remain a threat, however, and while the measures bernse describes are surely improvements, I still think the doorless cockpit would be the best long-term solution to the problem.
Well, think about that some more now. How could someone open a door without getting sucked out themselves in the process?
Or was this a “noble heroes only” kind of thing?
[quoteoriginally posted by Umbriel
As indicated earlier, I have mixed feelings about arming the flight crew, inasmuch as it might encourage them to intervene against threats to the passengers, thus distracting them from their primary responsibility and possibly compromising the security of the cockpit unnecessarily. On balance, it’s probably the right thing to implement currently, as certainly Sky Marshalls are. As a practical matter, I think the risk of a rerun of 9/11 is vastly reduced simply because passengers and crew will no longer assume that submitting to hijackers is the most prudent course of action. Attacks on the cockpit remain a threat, however, and while the measures bernse describes are surely improvements, I still think the doorless cockpit would be the best long-term solution to the problem.[/quote]
The more I read statements like this the more it’s brought home to me just how little the average person knows about pilots and their traing. There really seems to be this notion that the pilots are somehow eager to drop the Awesome Responsibility of Flight and go play cowboy. It’s not true.
If there is one thing drummed into a pilot’s head from day one it’s that, no matter WHAT the emergency, the very FIRST priority is to fly the plane. It doesn’t matter if you’re dripping blood into your eyes or on fire or what - flying the machine comes first.
However, we pilots ALSO know that sometimes there is less effort to flying than the public supposes. An airliner on autopilot at 30,000 feet will continue flying on course with no human intervention for quite some time. In the normal course of events humans monitor the situation because machines can and do fail, but should an extreme situation occur it is quite possible for the pilots to let the airplane fly itself for 5 or 10 minutes while they deal with the dire emergency. Take off and landing are where the pilot’s attention is most critical, not in cruise.
The public also seems to forget that there is ALWAYS more than one pilot aboard and on duty, just in case a pilot becomes incapacitated en route (which can and does happen). In which case one pilot might stand up and “play cowboy” but there is STILL a competant good-guy in control of the machine.
And most of all, the public doesn’t seem to understand that pilots are pilots because they want to fly. You don’t become a pilot to “play cowboy” or “pretend skymarshall”. If a person wanted to do those things it would be much easier and cheaper to just do them without getting a pilot’s license and multiple ratings required to fly the airlines first. Pilots are quite happy to let the sky marshall’s take care of the bad guys. They aren’t asking for guns to become “sky rangers” or whatever, they’re asking for guns because they don’t feel safe and they, more than the passengers, are aware that most flights still have no sky marshall’s aboard.
My idea is mostly like Umbriel’s. Keep the cockpit completely separate from the cabin. Give the pilots their own washroom and food/coffee supply. Allow the only connection between the cockpit and cabin to be the intercom.
Now, this is where my plan differs. Each plane has several tanks of “knockout gas” (sorry, I don’t know the proper term) hooked up so that it can be released into the cabin’s air supply (controlled by a switch in the cockpit). In the event that a would-be hijacker takes a hostage, the gas is released into the cabin, and it’s lights out for everyone except the pilots. Once the plane lands, the police (using gas masks) retrieve the hijackers and arrest them. Oh, yeah; gas masks would have to be forbidden in the cabin (the air supply from those masks the passengers are supposed to use in case of depressurization can be switched on and off, right?).
This makes sense, right?
A note on the doors. Imagine a cork that is inside of a bottle. The more pressure that is inside of the bottle, the more the cork pushes against the neck. A person inside of an unpressurized bottle can pull the cork in. In a pressurized bottle, he can’t. That’s the way the cabin doors work. In order to pressurize an aircraft, you need to have a good seal. By opening inward, the seal is made tighter with pressure. If you look at a door on an airliner, you’ll see that they initially move inward and then swing outward. If the aircraft is pressurized you can’t make the initial inward movement.
Of course manufacturers could design door frames with explosive bolts, but that would A) be incredibly expensive, B) open up the manufacturer to liability suits in case of a failure, and C) where would the door go? It would be blown into the wing root or the empanage.
What about an emergency pressure relief valve? That would depressurize the cabin, but O[sub]2[/sub] masks would automatically drop allowing the hijacker access to oxygen.
“Knockout gas” also has problems. How much do you use? Too little, and the hijacker isn’t affected. Too much and people die. Think of elderly people, people with respiratory problems, and children.
I see no problem with arming the pilots. As already noted, pilots are there to fly the aircraft. They’re not movie heroes. They are highly trained and disciplined. They’re not likely to use a firearm lightly. But they should have a “last ditch” means of protecting themselves and their aircraft.
Actually the “passenger” was an ATP. IIRC, he was “deadheading” on the flight. So he was a very well trained and highly experienced pilot. The aircraft in question was a Douglas DC-10. A turbine flew apart in the tail engine. Debris severed the redundant hydraulic lines that worked the aircraft’s control surfaces. I believe this resulted in a total hydraulic failure, which included the ailerons and “flaps”. (“Flaps” are specific control surfaces, but many non-pilots call any hinged control surface a “flap”.)
Since the two engines on the wings were functioning, the three pilots used differential thrust to control the aircraft. By increasing power to both engines equally, the aircraft climbs. Decreasing thrust causes it to descend. By increasing thrust on one engine and/or decreasing thrust on the other, lift is greater on the wing whose engine is producing more power. Greater lift causes that wing to rise and the aircraft to bank in the other direction. That is, more power to the starboard wing causes a bank to port and vice versa.
Unlike piston engines, turbines (with which I have zero experience) have to “spool up”. That is, there is a certain amount of “lag” between advancing the throttle and achieving the set power. Piston engines, which have pistons directly driving a crankshaft attached to a propeller, respond much more quickly. So these guys in the DC-10 not only had to fly a crippled aircraft, but they also had to plan their power changes in advance. IMO, this is one of the greatest feats of aviation heroism ever displayed.
FWIW, one of the pilots who saved the day on that fateful flight was forced to retire soon afterward when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 60 years old.
The book The Last Nine Minutes The Story of Flight 981 by Moira Johnston is about had happend when a cargo door flew off on a DC-10. In the book she brings up the point that Federal regulations call for an aircraft to be able to withstand a 1 square foot hole in the in the cabin. The Douglas people designed the DC-10 to withstand a 4 square foot hole 4 times the requirement. However when the cargo door came off the hole was so large that the pressure could not equalize between the upper and lower compartments fast enough through the vents installed in the aircraft. The floor buckled and jamed the control cables. The pilot was then unable to control the aircraft and it crashed.
Now I have a different idea. Move the cabin door back and install a rotating cylinder just in front of the door. One side of the cylinder has an opening to walk into and the other side is solid except for some vent holes (more on this in a minute). The cylinder is made out of the same stuff that Banks use for security screens over the tellers windows (bullet proof). To get into the cabin you would have to open the door, enter the cylinder, turn the cylinder 90 degrees, be recognised by the pilot, who would then release the solonoid keeping the cylinder in place and rotate the cylinder to the exit position.
In the event of a hijacker getting into the cylinder there is a small vent located just above the cylinder to the outside. The pilot waits until the cylinder is locked 90 from its starting position (hijacker is trapped) triggers the vent and cabin pressure is decreased at a controled rate. Did I mention that there is no oxygen mask inside the cylinder? :smack:
The hijacker is trapped in the cylinder because it is locked 90 degrees away from either exit, not enough oxygen to keep up his activites and everyone else has the planes emergency oxygen supply until the plane get down to thicker air.
{quote]originally posted by Max the ImmortalOh, yeah; gas masks would have to be forbidden in the cabin (the air supply from those masks the passengers are supposed to use in case of depressurization can be switched on and off, right?).
[/quote]
Wrong. It’s a totally automated system with a minimum of moving parts to minimize the chance of mechanical failures. The pressure drops to a certain point, the masks deploy. Once deployed, they can not be reset while in flight.
I saw on CNN a better way of dealing with hijakers:
The pilot simply gives the plane a sudden, violent nosedive.
The hijackers…assuming they are standing in the aisles and not belted into a seat…wouls suddenly find the floor falling away from their feet and hit their heads on the ceiling.
Most likely they would be nocked out cold, and possibly have broken necks.
This is a split-second maneuver: the plane then immediately levels out and the incapacitated hijackers are secured.
Well, I don’t know about you folks, but if I see some bastard flash a knife on the plane I’m riding on, I’m gonna give him my best rebel yell and rush him. Hopefully others will join me.
At the very worst, the bastard’s hostage gets killed or injured, but I’m on him before anyone else gets hurt. Or, hopefully, the bastard will realize that I’m the greater threat and go after me. But his weapon becomes useless once it’s stuck in me and I’m holding onto his hands.
The thing is, nobody is ever going to get away with the shit they pulled last September, because everyone aboard knows that if the hijackers succeed, everyone dies, plus possibly plenty of others on the ground. To our immense national credit, it took roughly one hour for Americans to figure this out, which is why one of the four planes wound up as a crater in Pennsylvania.
And I hope this trend continues in perpetia . . .
Sweet Jesus, if there was a place and time for vigilantism, a hijacked airliner is it.
Guns, bad. 150 passengers with airline food trays, good.
Tripler
I say “spork 'em!”
I agree with you completly. I had a discussion about this with a flight attendant a while back. Her attitude was if some were to try and hijack a plane she was on, she would announce that the reason everyone had to wait so long in security was trying to hijack the plane. All the frequent fliers would then be so pissed at all the security delays they would jump up and tear the guy from limb to limb.
This was said tounge in cheek, but I think there is some truth there.
Unfortunatly, there is no gas which can be flooded into an area to safely knock out everyone. While it is true that a knockout gas is used to put people under during surgery, the exact dosage is very critical and varies from person to person. Too much gas and they’re dead, too little and they’re still aware. This is why operating rooms have someone whose sole job is to monitor the patient’s vital signs and adjust the gas dosage to keep them out but not dead. If you flood a plane full of people with knockout gas, you’ll end up with a few sleeping peacefully, a bunch dead, and a bunch groggy but still awake.