I was considering all the different methods of preventing hijacking but they all have drawbacks:
The Sealed Cockpit Theory
Drawback - If the pilots got ill or went unconscious due to loss of cabin pressure, the passengers wouldn’t be able to get into the cockpit to try to land the plane.
The Overt Armed Guard Theory
Drawback - The hijackers could just shoot them (if they’ve smuggled a gun on board).
The Covert Armed Guard Theory
Drawback - One of hijackers could cause a distraction by creating an air-rage incident. This would force the plain-clothes guards to reveal themselves.
The Sleeping-Gas Theory
The pilot pushes a button and the passenger cabin fills with sleeping gas which puts everyone to sleep.
Drawback - Vulnerable passengers such as children or the elderly may be killed by an adult dose of sleeping gas. Not to mention the fact that the hijackers may have smuggled gas masks on themselves so you would end up in a worse situation than you were in before. Everyone is asleep.
Various other theories also seem to have their drawbacks.
But then it struck me. The perfect solution. It would be so simple yet so effective.
You arm everyone.
It seems a bold move but it is the only solution that seems to offer 100% protection from hijackers. Within two seconds of someone standing up on a plane to announce “Hi, Im a hijacker” he’ll have 200 guns trained on him.
Obviously it would be dangerous to have so many guns around so rather than use actual guns and bullets we could use tranquiliser darts that would just put the hijacker (or the air-rager) to sleep.
This simple method would virtually eliminate hijacking and air-rage. And it would solve the problem of breaches of security wherein hijackers smuggle guns on board. Hey, feel free to smuggle a gun on board - there’s no point since we all get one on the house.
I admit, I actually wondered about tranquilizer darts (I saw Firestarter). I have no actual clue as to how or if they’d work, but I do know discharging a firearm in a pressurized airplane is a no-no (I also saw Aiport 77). I would suspect that tranqs would be just as susceptible to, er, hijacking, as any other weapon would be, though. In other words, we can’t guarantee the hand administering the tranq is the hand we intended to have do so.
Also, in order to avoid the problem of people firing the tranquiliser guns for the wrong reasons or some lone crazy firing his gun into everyone around him, each gun would have only one dart.
And they would all be in locked holsters by your seat. The holsters would be unlocked by the air stewardesses or by the cockpit crew pushing a button releasing the guns.
This would ensure that passengers would only be able to get hold of the guns in a genuine emergency.
The “naked” solution wouldn’t work because, as anyone with young children will know, if you have young children on any kind of longish flight you need loads of stuff - diapers, toys, food, drink etc. We couldn’t eliminate hand luggage in all cases.
But we can arm everyone so that remains the only solution.
>>But we can arm everyone so that remains the only solution.
Agreed, it is the only reasonable solution.
The only problem with it is I think this would keep the cute stewardess very busy leaning over my seat which I can’t seem to keep locked in its standard upright position.
How about mandatory seat belts? They’d have remotely-controlled locks that only unlocked from the cockpit. People only get unlocked one at a time to get walked to the lavatory by a sky marshal.
About as practical as arming everybody or flying naked.
I did a quick vanity check, and my username just came up about a hundred times!
I like the tranq dart idea! I’d get credit for stoping every hijacking htat happens from now on. Just make sure mine has two strengths. One for terrorists, and one for the obnoxious punk behind me, the one that’s been kicking my seat for the last 1000 miles…
Hmm, my plan may be a bit radical but nobody has come up with an actual reason why it wouldn’t work.
Remember the guns would be locked down until a genuine crisis emerged so people wouldn’t be able to use them in ordinary circumstances. The Air Stewardesses and the pilots would have “Panic Buttons” that would release the guns.
This plan would also be a lot cheaper than having armed guards or FBI agents on every commercial flight.
The US Government has announced that there will be FBI on all commercial flights from now on but how long can they keep this up for?
Maybe a year or two but what then? Back to the situation we had before Tuesday, presumably. With maybe a bit extra security at the check-in desk.
My solution is cheap, 100% effective and permanent.
Better that than the hijacker gains control of the aircraft. And anyway 50 darts hitting him all at once would probably knock him out pretty quick.
OK, maybe we shouldn’t use it for air rage, just bona fide hijacks.
These would only be tranquiliser darts not bullets. Anyone hit would go to sleep. There may be one or two casualties over the years but since they would only be used in the rare event of a hijacking, casualties would be minimal.
And anyway no one would hijack a plane if they knew all the passengers had access to tranquiliser guns so hijackings would probably never happen.
So the guns would probably never actually be needed. They would fulfill their role by being a deterrent.
As I say, they would only become available to the passengers in the event of a genuine hijacking.
I would suggest my method is a lot more certain to foil the hijackers plans than the idea that we rely on a few brave passengers to go and tackle the bad guys empty-handed.
My method would have stopped in their tracks all those hijackers on Tuesday.
In fact those hijackers wouldn’t have even attempted it if all the passengers had had access to arms.
So Im still waiting for a decent reason why we don’t do it.
(Im aware it seems a bit radical but I honestly can’t see why it wouldn’t work.)
