EEK, A MOUSE!! Oh wait...no...just a shadow or something. Whew! I'll tell ya, been more than a little paranoid and jumpy since 9/11. Every non-white, non-English-speaking person I see, I assume they're about to ram a 747 into the Statue of Liberty. Evidently I am not alone. The U.S. has become a nation of jittery, paranoid, hyper-racist people. But the terrorists have not won, eh?
Air marshals (more than one per flight, apparently and astoundingly!), DEA agents?! How do the airlines find room for the actual...you know...
fare-paying passengers?
It's all so silly. Yes, silly. Ridiculous, even.
I will say this bluntly and out loud: There will never be another "9/11" style aircraft hijacking. Not in a million years. They might as well leave the cockpit doors unlocked and unguarded. No self-respecting airline pilot will ever let his plane get taken over ever again.
The thing that everyone seems to forget or ignore is that each of the crews on those hijacked and doomed airliners had the opportunity to end it
before the hijackers ever gained access to the cockpit. All they would've had to do was hit the "Fasten Your Seatbelts If You Want To Live" switch and then do a little "aggressive" maneuvering, to include some Negative-G (a la "Vomit Comet") while donning their O2 masks and depressurizing the cabin. Those in reach of their own oxygen masks would have had them. The hijackers, up and about (literally!) in the cabin, would be starving for air. (The stews knew where to find their own portable bottles.)
I'm not talking about yanking so hard you rip the wings off. Just the kind of maneuvering we all know an airliner can take. Heck, that Alaska Airlines DC-9 that crashed off the coast of California managed to fly inverted for a bit before the horizontal stabilizer broke completely off, sending the plane into a vertical plunge. Jets are tough.
Pin them on the floor with some robust positive-g (while bleeding speed off at the same time), then put 'em up on the ceiling with some negative. Then back on the floor, hard. Repeat as necessary until everything's quiet back there. The unstrapped cabin attendants would have to fend for themselves. But they're trained for that.
Let us recognize that in each of the cases, the hijackers had made themselves known in the cabin. With whatever "weapons" they had on them, they forced the flight attendants to force the pilots to open the doors. The flight crews willingly obliged (something every airline pilot must now wince at in retrospect). So all the
passengers were aware that Something Bad was happening. And bad stuff should not happen up at cruise altitude...MUST not happen up there.
No more airliners will be hijacked; that's my opinion. Airline pilots might have to sacrifice a flight attendant but, as morbid as it sounds, it's better than sacrificing the whole airplane and however-many people on the ground. Is it worth the trade-off? YOU BET IT IS! No airline pilot will let "9/11" happen again, air marshals or no air marshals onboard.
So everyone just relax a bit. Take a breath. Settle down. Let's not assume
every "foreigner" is out to cancel Christmas. Stop being so damned paranoid and just realize that the PILOTS...you know, the guys who have the ultimate control of the plane...will get you there safely, and we don't need trigger-happy armed guards to "help." (But oh, doesn't it make us feel better!)
To be sure, Muslim terrorists will strike again; that is a given. To a Muslim, the only good Christian is a dead Christian (never forget that). And they won't be stupid or silly enough to repeat their last gambit. The next attack will come "out of nowhere" just to prove to us that they can. And do not fool yourself, they certainly can. No amount of illegal wire-tapping or shoe-inspecting will prevent it. It will be interesting to see where and how they strike next.