I’m sure a more exhaustive and comprehensive search would turn up considerably more than the 8000+ hits I got - many of which are duplicates or follow-ups to a single incident.
So, hijacking attempts will clearly continue, whether by organized groups or by mentally derranged individuals. Clearly, however, both flight crews and passengers are also willing to take an active role in their own defense.
People are dumber than I thought. I guess I did not take into account the crazy idiot factor. The Saudi hi-jacker did not seem to be the most rational of people (though how did he get the pistol on board?.. that’s what I would most like to know…)
I still submit that smart terrorist organizations have (or should have) given up on 9/11 style hi-jackings. There are plenty of much softer targets out there that can do similar damage (theaters, stadiums, malls, subways, etc.), and there’s basically nothing in place to protect some of those places. If I were a bastardly terrorist dude, I’d just place some bombs underneath the benches at a popular church, wait until mass was in a session, and press the button. Or a school auditorium during assembly, hiding the bomb in the janitor’s cart or something. Not nearly as splashy as a 747, but would accomplish the objective of terror just as effectively (or in the case of a school, perhaps more effectively).
Planes are just so much riskier nowadays, I can’t see why a smart group would want to mess with that (not risky in terms of risk to themselves, but risky in terms of failure).
Meh, if all the terrorist cells insist on going after planes and getting their asses beat down, it would be a lot better for us all. So keep at it guys! You’ll crack that plane, really you will! Those 200 pissed-off passengers, don’t worry about’em. They have grown fat and apathetic with the opulence of our morally-bankrupt society!
Hmm… trying rephrasing the question to “would I sacrifice my life, my family’s life, and the lives of all aboard this airplane to save the life of 3,000 people on the ground?” Because it’s not just stopping one (or a few) men on the plane folks are concerned about these days, it’s preventing mass carnage on the ground as well as preventing the death of all aboard.
IF they get there in time.
The Air Force did scramble jets, and even sent two guys who were on an airborne training mission after the 9/11 jets. Not one arrived in time, although the already-airborne pair almost caught up one of them. Unfortunately, those two guys weren’t, at the time, carrying any weapons. The only thing they could have done was ram their own planes into the passenger jet. Would they have done it? Hmm… judging by what I saw in a couple TV interviews (their words, demeanor, etc.) I’d say yes, they would have. Maybe they could have ejected just before impact.
But they didn’t get to the passenger jet in time to do anything.
I’m sorry if this bothers people, but there is no way the government can guarantee it will either prevent or stop another 9/11 style hijacking.
Sometimes.
I do worry about the government getting trigger happy. I worry about it a lot.
There are three lines of defense when it comes to hijackings:
Prevent the Bad Guys from getting to the airplane - we all know about that, having “enjoyed” being screened by airport security.
Those on board take action against the Bad Guys - think “Pennsyvlania field”.
The military forcibly stops the plane, that is “shoots it down”.
I think we can all agree the we prefer to have the whole mess stop at #1 with detection of Bad Guys prior to boarding. That brings us to #2 and #3. Notice I put #3 last - it is moral to kill innocents if and ONLY IF there is truly no other alternative to massive carnage. In other words, yes, I think you can justify killing 30 or 50 in order to save 3000. That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, it is, regrettably, the lesser of two evils.
I wouldn’t limit it to just westerners - after all, just about everybody in the world heard about 9/11. Wouldn’t expect, say, a Sudanese or Indonesian to fight any less fiercely for his life, his family, or his country than any randomly chosen “westerner”.
That would be my preference, too. (Yes, the air marshalls are most definitely armed. With guns. And bullets designed to stop a person very quickly with minimal risk of causing collateral damage to the plane or other folks on board).
The brutal truth is, though, that there are NOT air marshalls on every flight. And, despite the best of training and intentions, it is always possible that the hijackers, if there are enough and they take advantage of surprise, could disable or kill the air marshalls. If this occurs, the next line of defense is the flight crew and passengers themselves. This is not, of course, “fair” in any sense of the word. Crime by its very nature is not fair. Nonetheless, it is conceivable that your safety could come down to who is sitting next to you on an airplane, and the odds are much more likely that your on-board neighbors will be a child, an elderly person, or flabby overweight typical American than a Wesley Snipes/Passenger 57 type or the likes of a Jackie Chan.
Should this horrific thing happen - your airplane hijacked and the marshalls, along with some the flight crew most likely, are lying dead in assorted pools of blood - you might seriously consider an attempt to re-take the plane. Is it likely to succeed? Well… to be honest the odds are against you. However, if there are already people dead in the aisles you KNOW you’re dealing with killers and the odds are you won’t survive if you do nothing. You can sit and die, or attempt to save yourself and most likely die - but maybe not. Your choice.
Yes. In fact, there are two reasons.
First - Passengers might re-take the airplane. This has actually happened in a couple of hijacks where crew and passengers subdued bad guys. Obviously, if we can save the people aboard the airplane this is better than shooting it down, which is certain death for everyone on board. So, rather than a trigger-happy “shoot-to-kill” approach at the first sign of a hijack, it makes sense to wait as long as possible before you MUST shoot down an airplane.
Historically, the US has always been exceedingly reluctant to shoot anything down. When Payne Stewart’s chartered Lear jet ceased communicating they did send planes to intercept and follow, but choose NOT to shoot the airplane down even though it was highly unlikely anyone was still alive more than 15 or 20 minutes after take off (they climbed to 40,000+ feet in a plane with no pressure - I think your survival time at 40,000 without supplemental oxygen is about 4 minutes). They basically let it fly until it ran out of fuel and crashed on it’s own, and as long as its flight path didn’t threaten any major human habitation that’s likely the course they’d follow if a similar accident happened again. Why? Because folks were hoping someone would beat the odds, however unlikely.
Pre-9/11, I’m not sure the Air Force even bothered to arm most planes on intercepts in domestic airspace. They do now. Why? most intercepts involve small planes that are lost or in some sort of distress and, to be blunt, a F-whatever fighting plane doesn’t require bullets to down a single-engine four-seat Cessna or Piper. NOW we’re worried about catching and downing passenger jets - those do require bullets/air-to-air missiles to bring down.
I guess the point here is, don’t kill anyone unless you absolutely have to in order to protect other people. Sure, if a jet is heading towards lower Manhattan you may have to - but if you’re over Montana cattle ranches or the Atlantic ocean you’ve got some time before you have to kill someone, time in which someone might change the situation for the better.
Second - Because it might fall on something just as critical as a city.
When you “shoot down” an airplane it doesn’t dissolve into mist - pieces and chunks, some of them quite large, plummet earthward at great speed and sooner or later smack into something, causing great havoc and damage.
Many large cities are surrounded by extensive belts of urban development. Flaming jet debris raining down on a suburb of a city could easily cause multiple ground casualties and extensive damage. How horrific this is depends in part on the population density AND the construction of what the airplane falls on. The WTC, for instance, was designed to withstand the impact of a jet passenger plane (the 707 being used as the standard). It wasn’t the impact that brought the buildings down, it was the fire. Imagine if those buildings had NOT stood up to having 300,000 lb objects smash into them at 500 mph - skyscrapers would have fallen like dominoes. If you bring down a large airplane over the downtown of a smaller city where there are many buildings - buildings smaller and thus less likely to withstand such an impact - you could “domino” a large swath of real estate and have potentially just as much or even more damage as if the jet continued to a target in New York, Chicago, or Washington DC. (Which is not to say that alternative is in any way better - clearly, this is a case of being caught between a rock and a hard place)
Also, while nuclear plants are unlikely to be harmed by a crashing jet (that was taken into consideration in their design) consider large industrial complexes - say, a petroleum refinery, or a chemical plant. A jet crashing into one of those would not only cause terrible damage but, given the flammable and in some cases highly toxic substances in such places, generate something even worse than a “mere” plane crash. Think the Bhopal, India disasater crossed with a major forest fire.
There are probably sceanarios I’m not evil enough to think of that would make 9/11 look trifling. Now isn’t that a horrific thought - that 3000 dead and 16 acres of Manhattan leveled in a single morning is NOT the worst of all possible worlds?
Some goverment talking head said recently they’re concerned about new airplane hijackings because Al-Qaeda tends to return to successful tactics. Well, yes, I guess that’s why Al-Qaeda is so very fond of truck bombs. They’re also more practical - relatively cheap, lots of already-trained drivers (as opposed to sending your operatives to flight school), and don’t attract nearly as much attention going by a building as a 747 does.
I get really cranked about the hysteria (because it IS hysterical at times) about airplanes when, really, there are so many other means of terror that could be used. I sometimes wonder if the government is trying to get us to focus on the skies so we don’t notice all the many thousand commercial trucks full of dangerous substances traveling the highways (as just one example).
In fact, there is SOME security for the places you mention, but another brutal fact is that we just can NOT guard every vulnerable place 24/7 - we have niether the money nor the manpower to do so.
Fact is, major terrorist incidents have taken place all over the world since 9/11 - but none here. Is it because the Bad Guys are lying low for a couple years, waiting for our guard to come down - or are some of our post-9/11 measures actually working? I’m not sure anyone knows for sure.
Well, having dim-wit operative like Mr. Shoe-Bomber continuing the attempts might actually have some advantage for the Bad Guys. First of all, it gets rid of their group’s idiots - a certain level of intelligence is required to pull off a terrorist plot, after all. It also allows them to keep testing our defenses for soft spots. If they find one, they’ll exploit it. If, on the off chance Mr. Reid had succeeded they would have not only gotten ridden of a potentially troublesome member of their own organization, they would have taken down a jet full of westerners in the deal, too. And started production of more shoe bombs.
In other words, continued attempts, even if they fail to bring down a jet, might still be of some use to them in other minor matters. If it works - hey! They scored big! Win little or win big, but win/win. So a continual testing of the defenses would make some strategic sense.
But, don’t discount that people seem to have a special fear of Things Falling Out of the Sky. I think there’s a psychological aspect to Death From Above as opposed to Death by Truck or Death by Gun. Maybe it’s a similarity to stories of Divine Retribution. Maybe it’s a feeling of being unable to hide from it. Maybe it’s because the average person has a much better understanding of ground vehicles and such, as opposed to the Mysterious World of Aviation. I’m not sure. But folks seem more paranoid about death by airplanes than death by ground vehicle.
Is this actually relevant? I, as the hypothetical hostage, am more concerned about how I will die or not die, first and foremost. Secondly, I am concerned about friends and family, both on and off the plane. 3rd parties come next, and the terrorist himself is way down the list. Yes, I may die tackling the terrorist, but I’m almost certain to die if I don’t. Therefore it’s preferable to try. If my nephew were aboard (I have no family of my own), I might even make a suicidal charge against a terrorist with a gun simply to use up his bullets so that others can take him down, but otherwise I’m not going to take an immediately suicidal action. But let him turn his back…
I pray that I never have to put myself to the test.
FWIW I’m holidaying in an Islamic country later this year.
Ignore my post - while it comments on the OP’s penultimate paragraph and the cited quote, it in no way responds to the actual question asked by the OP. Sorry.
rjung and avenger I was responding to the posting that X~Slayer(ALE) had made about the Pakistani wanting to use the rest room even though he had a Pakistani-speaking friend, he was still pounding the cockpit door.
So no I was NOT joking when I said a passeneger should have a vague idea of the language of the majority of the people that would be on that plane. OR AT LEAST have translations available in ALL possible languages, BEFORE they even board the plane about the locations of various facilities and especially what NOT to do - and a reminder to the non-Englih-speaking passenger mentioning 9/11/2001 and that people are a lot “touchier” about any unusual activity.
and thanks to Wang-ka for agreeing with me.
Heck, as the saying goes, when in Rome do as the Romans do. Let’s face it, in this day and age of global travel the whole world is NOT going to bow down to whatever YOU think you should do or what language YOU speak, what customs to follow, etc. As I said this is harsh but might prevent planes from being flown into buildings again.
If I’m on a plane with my wife and kid I’m not going to let a bunch of wannabe hero yahoos crash the plane. There’s always a chance the terrorists could change their mind. It’s stupid to deliberately crash the plane. I would do what ever I could to obstruct such an attempt on a hijacked plane. No one else has the right to make those decisions about my life or the lives of my family. Most hijackings do make it back to the ground, you know. 9/11 was atypical. The last thing we need is a bunch of idiots jumping up and trying to crash the plane at the least sign of trouble. Don’t try it on my plane. I will cut you off at the knees.
I don’t think anyone here was advocating delibrately crashing the airplane. Me, I suggested re-taking the airplane, with the assumption that after the Bad Guys are subdued there will be an attempt to land the plane.
In fact, not too long ago we even had a thread where we discussed the possibility of passenger landing an airliner and some of the steps required to do so.
Ditto on that Broomstick
Although my postings have been rather harsh, I always thought I made it clear that (in my opinion since Sept 11, 2001) any hijacking should be considered lethal and every effort should be made to subdue (up to and including the killing) of the hijackers. Self-destruction should only be an extreme last resort.
Ok…so let me get this straight. You think that you, a person who admits to being “cowardly” when it comes to physical contfrontation is going to all of a sudden muster the courage to confront TERRORISTS? Does this not seem laughable?
Let’s think about this for a second. A group of armed terrorists take over a plane. They are yelling and gibbering in Arabic or whatever waving around weapons and matbe killing a passenger or two to put the fear of Allah in the rest. What are you going to do? Get up and punch one of them in the face and hope the other passengers bum rush them with you?
wolf_meister - I realize that 9/11 has become the perfect excuse for xenophobia, overreaction and other forms of hysteria but realize that you sound like an ignorant bigot. By “passenger” I assume you mean anyone whos not Western and by “language of the majority of the people that would be on that plane” I assume you mean “English”.
I agree. I believe “crashing” the airplane is an unfortunate side effect of untrained civilians attempting to land, not the intent.
msmith537
No, not necessarily that passengers speak English only. In this day and age, if I were flying on a Swedish airline, I’d be damned sure I learned enough Swedish that my words or actions would not be misinterpreted in the least.
I sound like a bigot? Hmmm in Saudi Arabia they execute people for “crimes” of adultery or homosexuality. Sounds like an open-minded free-thinking country to me. (ROFLMAO)
Yeah sure…whatever. I didn’t need to learn freakin Portuguese when I went to Brazil and yet I somehow managed to survive a 15 hour flight without my actions being “misinterpreted”. Besides, you also have the luxary of English being basically an internation language of aviation.
So are you one of those people who believe that it is excusable to “misinterpret” the intentions of anyone who is dark skinned and doesn’t speak English fluenetly?
How is that relevant? You feel that another society’s prejudice justifies your ignorance?
bmsmith537**
If I were on a Brazilian airline - damned right I’d learn enough Portuguese so that I could fit in well enough, so passengers wouldn’t misconstrue anything I was doing.
I was actually responding to the posting about the Pakistani pounding on the cockpit door because he needs the Men’s room.
Sure, it seems bigoted and narrow-minded to think that people should speak the native language of the other passengers but times have changed. There was a time when you could leave your front door unlocked too.
As far as Saudi Arabia, basically I have no tolerance for the intolerant.
You fail to appreciate the beauty though. If WE take things into our own hands and bring the plane down instead of them, it was in OUR control, not theirs. We get the upper hand.
Why not? I have always tried to learn at least a smattering of the main language of any country I have visited. In my family, it’s considered good manners. Hell, you should have seen my grandparents struggling in their Mandarin class before their first trip to China! It may be difficult, but being a courteous visitor in another’s country is always worth the effort.
Maybe I misunderstood your post, but it sounded to me like just another “I speak English so screw you” kind of thought. I apologize if I was mistaken.
