Oh, I’m aware that they can detect the metal… but hell, I wear non-steel toed boots with no laces (so easy to wear!) and the nails in the soles set the detectors off. It is simply a matter of metal being ubiquitous, and razor blades being small, that simply makes heightened security not a justifiable response at the detectors themselves.
Had they made it through with guns, for sure I’d be questioning the guards too (and of course guns have made it on before). But box knives… you’re just not going to be able to defend against that and keep people happy to fly.
Then you won’t have to worry about terrorism, you’ll have to worry about a whole segment of the economy
Just an FYI, knives to not have to be made out of metal. Kyocera has been making ceramic knives for years.
Either way, as has been said before on the board, given the recent events, no terrorist is going to get control of the cockpit ever again. I offer this prediction, if someone threatens a cockpit in the future, the passengers will attack and beat whoever it is to within an inch of his life. Actually, a beating to death is a real possibility. I don’t care if the terrorist is carrying an AK-47, the passengers will attack.
I just thought of this and I didn’t want to start a new thread. I don’t think it really has any bearing on the discussion at hand.
In the 1980s a disgruntled employee of Pacific Southwestern Airlines (PSA) smuggled a gun onto the British Aerospace short-haul twin-jet that was flying from Los Angeles to (IIRC) San Francisco. He got into the cockpit and killed the flight crew, then caused the aircraft to dive straight into the ground. It was after that that airport workers began to be subjected to the same security checks as the passengers.
Just seal the cockpit with bullproof door. Then put sleeping gas in the cabin. Anyone tries to be funny, the pilot can release the sleeping gas in the cabin. Everyone goes to sleep until the flight reaches the nearest airport.
I don’t see how this is a problem. Assuming there is some communication system between the sealed cockpit and the cabin, a non-kamikaze terrorist could still accomplish his/her goals.
If they do not wish to take over the cockpit and crash the plane, but simply take it to cuba, syria, whatever, they could still threaten the girl and force the pilot to fly to the destination.
If they still demanded to be let into the cockpit, I’d suspect that their motives were something other than a classic hijacking.
That would have been my second suggestion, once bashere was done shooting holes in my remote control idea. But dwtno’s modification of my idea is even better, proving that with enough smart people working on the problem, we can come up with something.
I actually mentioned this gas idea in a thread we had on bank robberies, but the counterpoint was that some people are alergic to the gas, or their state of health wouldn’t allow them to become safely anethetized, etc. But hell, if the plane is under hijack, we will need to take some extreme measures anyway. If people are willing to chargre an AK47, as many have said they are, then people should also be willing to be put to sleep without the benifit of an anesthesiologist. The way I see it, I have the option of going to sleep rather peacefully with a very slight chance of possibly not waking up, or slaming into a building and simultaneously killing 20 thousand people. Me? I’m going to sleep, thanks.
Of course, not security has to check passengers for self-contained gas masks, if it’s possible to hide such a thing.
Of course, the pilot still has to have a clue as to what is going on, and not just casually waltz out into the cabin to see what all the fuss is about as happened in the plane that went down in Penn.
Well, I for one am not checking my laptop. I know how badly luggage is treated, and my little lcd screen is not going through that. There is also the danger of theft of confidential information. Also, I need my purse. I have a small one. It carries my I.D.s, tampons and pads, my cell phone, my money and credit cards, my medication, which sometimes includes an inhaler. I am reluctantly willing to check the tool kit it also contains, but those other items are staying on my person, or I don’t fly. The only item above that I would have considered optional before Tuesday is the cell phone. Not any more.
Kamandi, I would love to have you give your opinion on this thread having to do with a similar topic but with a different approach to solving the security issue.
Expect to see them. At least one FAA comment has indicated that they will be coming back.
At least one Congresscritter has called for replacing privately-hired airport security personnel with federal agents, too.
I can see limiting carry-ons, but banning them entirely is unreasonable, especially for people with special medical needs like inhalers (do you want a passenger dying of asthma because her inhaler is in the cargo hold?) and parents flying with small children.
Yes, but a hell of a lot cheaper than the delays and staffing required to search for needles in haystacks, certain to bankrupt some of the airlines. It seems that all the solutions regarding security on the ground prior to boarding are time consuming and labour intensive and will never be completely reliable. Furthermore, the sky marshal program would be unnecessary.
A bulkhead can easily be designed, approved and constructed that would completely isolate the flight crew from the cabin. Elimination of direct communication with each other but separate communication with the ground for both cabin and cockpit would ensure absolutely no incentive for hijackers who would have no hope of control of the aircraft for whatever purpose they might have.
To deal with the negative points Kamandi has raised
Forget the door. No door
How about access from the cockpit directly below the cabin sole (floor), with a walkway leading to window ports to view flight controls if neccessary.
Much less likely than engine failure. That is why we have two pilots carrying more than 9 passengers.
The expense is nothing compared to ground measures presently in operation
How neccessary is the crash axe? In the big scheme of things, if this is the only objection, I doubt the crash axe has saved anywhere near the number of lives lost through terrorism in the history of aviation.
Uh, if the cockpit door is sealed, how are pilots supposed to go to the bathroom?
If they get a fire caution light for the back cabin, how are they supposed to investigate?
In my opinion, all this sudden focus on airline safety is misplaced. I don’t think this type of attack will be tried again for a long time, simply because we’re aware of it now. That means passengers won’t be passive, pilots won’t give in to demands, etc. The chance of this type of attack succeeding again is very slim.
And banning knives and such is just ridiculous. What about pens? A steel pen can kill someone too. How about laptops? I could easily hide a spool of wire inside one and use it to garrotte a flight attendant and force the pilot to open the door.
And do they even need weapons? On one of the flights, it was reported that terrorists were saying that they had a bomb, and there has been more than one hijacking that took place because the hijacker said he had a bomb that didn’t exist. And no amount of security can prevent imaginary bombs from getting on board.
I like grienspace’s point, do we know that the cost of building aircraft with separate cockpits from passanger cabins is greater than the cost the additional staff, metal detectors, and passenger time lost that will occur without modifying the aircraft? And what about that day in the future when ground security becomes lax again?
The arguments that we might want to have some hero from the passenger section rush in and pilot the plane in an emergency don’t impress me. There can’t have been 5000 people whose lives have been saved that way between the Wright Bros. first flight and today. I’d be surprised if there are 500.
However, we’re not going to halt passenger flights until all aircraft can be refitted, so the sky marshals, etc will have to bear the bruden for now. I wonder if we could get Boeing to design the Sonic Crusier with a separate cockpit though. Then they could hype how much safer it was as well as how much faster.
My wife is a flight attendant and when I said something about this, she had a fit. Several reasons have been given why this isn’t a good idea, but her reason is that she has had three or four instances in the last three years that she needed the Captain to quiet down a passenger. In at least two of these they also called ahead for the sheriff to meet the plane.
The doors into the cock-pit are jokes. An Alaska Airlines plane had a passenger knock down the plane and threaten to crash the plane. He was 6’5" and it took five passengers to pull him out. So the door does need to be stronger. The doors will not only cost more money, but the airlines will resist because of the extra weight.
The biggest problem is that what just happened is something that no one thought would ever happen. Hijackings have normally been the “Take us to Cuba” types. In these cases, they have found that it is better to go along with the hijackers. This has been a policy for years.
It was thought that in order to get someone to go on a suicide mission, you had to have them do it close to home, so that they could be indoctrinated right up to the time of going into action. So no one worried about what just happened. The passengers on the first three planes probably also thought they were being taken somewhere.
From now on everyone will look at it differently, but this was a very costly lesson.
The idea of Sky Marshalls is a very good one. Tuesday, my wifes plane was called back to the terminal just before take-off. She had an FAA inspector on the plane along with a Federal Marshall. When the Federal Marshall’s are on the plane they have to notify the crew, since they are armed.
This is my own idea for all it is worth. The passengers could have used their “seat cushions” as shields against those box cutters. Even thrown a few on the way.
I would suggest that what your wife needed was not a captain, but someone with as much authority as she has and the physical presence or strength of the captain. Obviously flight attendants should be trained in martial arts.
When I travel by myself, all I need is a book. But when I travel with the little nipper, I carry a diaper bag crammed full with toys, snacks, diapers, a clean outfit, water, juice… and then pack more because I’m scared of a Northwest-Airlines-style 12-hour tarmac stranding.
However, I’d be more than happy to come to the airport early and allow them to search every inch of the diaper bag. That doesn’t seem unreasonable.
One of my pilot friends was trying to calm his daughter, a captain for United, who was getting overwrought. He suggested she could roll the plane, which would toss the hijackers around but not harm the pilots or passengers who had their seatbelts on. I said no way you could recover from a roll, but he says you can roll it in one second and right in two seconds. He also suggested decompressing the cabin, but I don’t understand how you could prevent a hijacker from getting a mask like everyone else–or ripping one off the face of a pilot. That wouldn’t be cool.
Indeed. We need to extend our focus to other areas of vulnerability. I’ve been idly wondering how big an effort it would be for a terrorist organization to hijack a cargo ship at sea, and proceed on into a harbor posing as the legitimate crew. With, say, a nice big cargo of ammonium nitrate. Look up the Texas City disaster, or reflect on what McVeigh did with just a truckload of it. And there is undoubtedly a wide variety of commercial cargos that could be put to very ugly uses.
I know that there is security in place for ships entering a harbor. In most large harbors they have to take an inland pilot on board to navigate the harbor. I don’t know how hard current security measures would be to circumvent. Ship crews are often of varied national backgrounds, and it appears that “bulk carrier” ships often operate as tramps, so it’s not as if harbors see these guys operating on a regular run, which is more likely to be the case with container ships.
Before this, hijackings usually ended somewhat peacefully. The hijackers goal was never to auger the thing in.
Although a few years ago a suicidal man did shoot & kill the crew of a commercial jet then nose it into the ground, and a disgruntled FedEx employee tried to commandeer a cargo jet (with a hammer and a diver’s speargun!) so he could destroy FedEx HQ with it, neither of these were political acts.
Sure, I think the physical security of the cockpit may improve because of this. But it’s not the real problem. The security of the airlines in terms of keeping hijackers off the plane to begin with is.
And in terms of cockpit security, I agree with the US Official who suggests that the Captain & 1st Officer simply carry sidearms. They are almost always former military officers and they are all certainly trusted, responsible individuals to begin with. That and/or armed, undercover Sky Marshalls and you’ve almost got the problem solved.
