You are a passenger on a 767, seated at the overwing exit. The last 30 minutes have seemed like eternity as you witnessed brutal treatment of cabin crew and other passengers. The aircraft is flying low over New York, the sun shines brightly on the cloudless day but you see no beauty. It’s very noisy with some people crying and others shouting the engines too are making more noise than usual.
Suddenly you hear a sickening noise; your mind slows down the action to help you see clearly the enormity of the situation you now find yourself in. You can see the cabin in front of you collapsing towards you. You hear another noise, it is the sound of your bones breaking as your legs crash hard against the seat in front, you feel no pain. You are powerless to stop your head hitting the mass before you, as your brain sloshes and pulps inside your skull your life ends, it would have anyway as the man who sat behind you now is forced against the back of your seat, the pressure breaking your ribs and your sides split open and soon there remains nothing identifiable.
Your journey is over, three rows behind a woman and her child hear the noise of their own bones breaking yet they feel no pain….
If that has no effect then lets refresh our short memories;
In 1991 I sat up late one night as I watched cruise missiles land in Iraq, 1 month later the parent company of the profitable airline I worked for predicted losses and at the end of that charter season the airline was closed. Many others closed too. There was a recovery of the industry until things were quite good really then came the day we call 9/11. Respectfully disregarding the obvious suffering of those involved, the decline in the industry was devastating, all the major airlines suffered losses, maybe myth but I read that the losses combined were greater than the profits made since flying began nearly one hundred years before. Aircraft orders were cancelled, crews and support staff in airlines and ancillary sectors were laid off, salaries and pensions all suffered.
For reasons which are many and varied this industry finds itself a target for a group or groups of people who will stop at nothing to create a spectacular demonstration of their power to disrupt our lives. They also have no problem, wrongly or rightly, of justifying that act on Western behaviour towards them.
When Isay stop at nothing, that is exactly what I mean. How any professional pilot can assume that every other pilot thinks like them and has no sympathy with these criminal aims is beyond reason. No pilot has as yet been linked to radical extremism but that is just historical. The fact is that these groups are well funded and their members are intelligent, dedicated (beyond Western definitions of the word) individuals who would likely find no problem completing an approved course in flying training. Had these people begun training following 9/11, they could well be approaching commands of regional jets or joined the large numbers leaving the regionals for flag carriers and other majors. Pilots and aircrew should expect no special treatment other than the ability to fast track a queue.
The security services this week have done their job to the best of their ability and time will tell how successful they have been and continue to be. The threat level has been taken to its highest ever level and procedures put in place that some consider unreasonable, well unfortunately that is what happens when people, even professionals, are given an unfamiliar environment (you may know that if you have ever been asked to explain your reasoning during a loft ex). Very soon security professionals will create a workable and effective control, they quite simply have to. In the meantime we should be and are working with the shop floor security searchers as an example to passengers and a deterrent to would be criminals. Whilst we argue over pens the only truth is that the industry simply cannot afford another 9/11 or 7/7 and neither are we privy to all the facts or intelligence.
JP