Originally Posted by
LOWI
Politics aside (thread drift from quite a number of users in this thread),
This is a very serious security threat and quite a new method of breaching of the security perimeter. Many airports around the world will need to learn from this now and secure the perimeter even more.
If this guy was more direct and started shooting the sitting duck passengers from the moment he came onboard, this could have been the worse Australian aviation disaster in recent times.
Here's a question to all flight crew on here: It's you sitting up the front there, almost certainly there is no Barry boarding behind him, 50kg flightie freezes with fear, he walks into flight deck, closes door and dead bolts (according to reports today, he was on his way to the flight deck under guise of "I'm an engineer with something for the pilots).
So door is closed and locked, shotgun pulled and aimed at skipper, and he says "take off or he gets it".
Unless you REALLY back your backward-hand pen skills, what happens next?
In all honesty, this was so close to happening - so it's a bit scary thinking about what you'd realistically do next when he says "order flighties to close the doors, take off now"..