posted on September 22, 2001 03:24:41 PM new
Have a door so that if you are not buckled down into your seat, you get sucked out! (just kidding). Make sure the crew is all in their seats and buckled down and open the hatch! Bye Bye terrorist!!
I think the door between the pilot area and the plane needs to be reinforced and have some sort of keyless entry. If they force the stewardess to key in the code there should be an extra number she can add that will permantly seal the door until the plane lands.
posted on September 22, 2001 07:03:49 PM new
Of course if everyone on all flights were welcome and encouraged to carry a gun I don't think the hijackers would be very thrilled by that prospect either. Not that the government would ever come back to allowing citizens to protect themselves again no matter how bad a job they are doing. If I had my "formal" carry of a military .45 and two clips in my left pocket I could object real well to a detour. Yeah I know it would depressurize the plane - as everyone keeps saying - better than the alternative. Couldn't be any worse than gassing everybody. I can see the hijacker putting a mask on if he knew gas was a problem. They might wear body armor but they have not invented face armor, and a shot through the upper leg with a 280 grain .45 will definitly distract you....
posted on September 22, 2001 07:56:52 PM newGravid, you're reminding me of a report I read about a town in (I think) Georgia a few years ago. Word went out that all citizens of that town were welcome to bear arms. Including concealed weapons. Gun purchases soared. Crime rate decreased dramatically. Food for thought...
posted on September 22, 2001 08:59:44 PM new
toke, I meant something like ether that would just put everyone to sleep until they could be handcuffed (although ether itself is really flamable). Something that would fill the passenger area quickly, but wouldn't harm any/many people in general.
posted on September 23, 2001 09:32:57 AM newThese are things they know to consider now that they didn't know 10 days ago.
There are a LOT of reasons why what happened on 911 wouldn't happen again, and lack of small knives is but a minor one of those reasons.
The reason why the attack worked in the first three cases is that both the pilots and passengers did not understand what the hijackers had in mind. The reason it mostly failed in the 4th case is that, even after they had gained control of the plane, the passengers DID come to understand what was going on.
Small knives are not an effective weapon against any significant number of combative people, that's why they were allowed in the first place.
Arming pilots is a good thing. Plain cloths marshalls might be a good thing, but we are unlikely to be able to afford enough of them. El Al has very few flights.
An obvious primary defense is a simple rule that the pilots cannot surrender control of the airplane no matter what happens in the passenger cabin.
I hear a recent personal report that a 3 inch pair of tweezers was taken from a passenger. This is silly. A good key is a more effective weapon than a pair of tweezers, we simply cannot remove all such weapons from passengers.
Again, the techniques used by the hijackers are highly unlikely to be successful if used again, even if we allow small, sharp metallic objects on planes.
