Pilot's words to passengers

[Eboy]

Excerpted from Inside the Beltway column in the Washington Times, Sept. 20:

Over the airplane's public-address system came a most incredible announcement from the captain of United Flight 564 as it was about to pull out of the gate at Denver International Airport last Saturday, writes Peter Hannaford, a public-affairs consultant in Washington and former adviser to President Reagan.
"I want to thank you brave folks for coming out today," the pilot began. "We don't have any new instructions from the federal government, so from now on, we're on our own."
The passengers listened in total silence.
"Sometimes a potential hijacker will announce that he has a bomb. There are no bombs on this aircraft and if someone were to get up and make that claim, don't believe him. If someone were to stand up, brandish something such as a plastic knife and say, 'This is a hijacking' or words to that effect, here is what you should do:
"Every one of you should stand up and immediately throw things at that person — pillows, books, magazines, eyeglasses, shoes — anything that will throw him off balance and distract his attention. If he has a confederate or two, do the same with them. Most important: get a blanket over him, then wrestle him to the floor and keep him there. We'll land the plane at the nearest airport and the authorities will take it from there.
"Remember, there will be one of him and maybe a few confederates, but there are 200 of you. Now, since we're a family for the next few hours, I'll ask you to turn to the person next to you, introduce yourself, tell them a little about yourself and ask them to do the same."
The end of this remarkable speech, Mr. Hannaford says, brought sustained clapping from the passengers.

[Secret Squirrel]

I actually quite like it. I wish I had the balls to incorporate that in my PA. Let's face it, if there is a bomb, chances are you'll die anyway; and if there isn't, there's a good chance of success.

Certainly after this last episode, I think most passengers would probably do this anyway.

[HugMonster]

Good for him!

I suspect that the survival prospects for a hijacker at the moment, particularly in the USA, are not too high. I think that the aircraft would probably land with the remains of the hijacker trailing behind in the slipstream attached by piano wire round his neck...

Not quite sure where you'd find a piano on board, but you get the picture...

[jazzi]

You people are remarkable.
Truly remarkable.

[MarkD]

Brilliant stuff. Have forwarded this to everyone in my inbox who travels frequently.

Any EI, BA or FR pilot who says this when I travel out of EICK next - I'll lead the applause! ;)

[scroggs]

Wonderful. I shall remember this on the off-chance that I shall again get the chance to brief the passengers.

[aristotle]

Awesome. Well said. And very true.

[Pandora]

My captain last wed am gave a liitle speech that air travel as we know it has changed, and it is down to every person involved, whether they are working for the airline or a pax to be viligilant and brave in the coming months. Can't give you his exact words as I was too busy dealing with transfer pax, their bags and the dispatcher. Cabin crew came in and said there was stunned silence from the pax and every one of them for the first time ever sat up an watched the safety briefing from start to end.

[Flyswift]

Top stuff. This should be made mandatory as part of the pre take off checks.

[stagger]

Great briefing! I think this pilot has substantially reduced the chances of a successful hijack on his aircraft.

In another thread I pointed out that when people are in a crowd there is a tremendous amount of behavioural inertia and it generally takes a command from an authority figure (such as a pilot) to get people to take drastic action that makes them stand out from the crowd (and thus expose themselves to danger). However, once the first person takes action others will generally follow.

And the suggestion from this pilot that the passengers get talking to the person next to them is another tactic likely to increase the chances of mass action against a hijacker. Break down the social barriers between passengers and they are more likely to come to each others assistance and jump into potentially dangerous situations to help each other.

Only one concern though – in the current climate once a hijacker (or suspected hijacker) has been restrained by the passengers he will be very unlikely to make it back down to the ground alive to be handed over to the authorities. Some intervention by the crew would probably be required to calm things down. Why worry about this? Well, really only because given current levels of anxiety there could be quite a few false alarms due to misunderstandings. I’m not going to lose any sleep over someone intent on martyrdom having his mission completed a little earlier than he planned – but I do worry that misunderstandings (perhaps due to language difficulties) could lead to precipitous action by passengers.

[Celtic Emerald]

Heard that a pax if middle Eastern origin stood up mid flight to go to the loo on an American domestic flight and all the pax around him started screaming.

One commentator on telly said he took a domestic scheduled flight in America the other day & he was the only pax. Didn't mention the type of aircraft he was travelling on. What paranoia!

Emerald

[TikkiRo]

I personally think it would be wonderful if more of you pilots did do more personal announcements - I can appreciate that you've a busy job to do, and some of you hate that point where you have to bother talking to your pax, but we in the back like to know that we have a human being for a pilot not a robot who's programmed to give announcements about height, wx and destination etc. A bit of humour the odd time wouldn't go amiss either. Having said all that the only time to do such announcements is before take-off - believe me, as a well-travelled pax, I can tell you that those long-winded announcements given mid-flight about the above topics can't be heard over the noise of the engines depending on where you're sitting. I also know from my many jumpseat flights that the flightdeck is a lovely quiet environment and perhaps you don't realise that doesn't hold for those in the back. Regardless, this guy was superb for taking the time to do this one - follow his lead the rest of you - it's YOUR plane at the end of the day and you're the ones we pax expect to sort out any issues affecting the rest of us.

TR

[Airbubba]

Almost sounds like an urban legend but here's another account:

September 21, 2001

Experts: Passengers Should Fight
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 5:53 p.m. ET

Kathy Rockel was amazed when her United Airlines flight last weekend began with an extraordinary message from the pilot: He informed passengers how to rise up and fend off hijackers.

"If anybody stands up and is trying to take over the plane, stand up together, take whatever you have and throw it at their heads,'' she quoted the pilot as saying. "You have to aim for their faces so they have to defend themselves.''

The pilot also said passengers could fight hijackers by throwing blankets over their heads, wrestling them to the ground and holding them until he landed, Rockel said. And referring to the "we the people'' preamble to the Constitution, she recalled, he said, "We will not be defeated.''

"Everybody on the plane was applauding,'' said Rockel, a medical transcriptionist traveling from Denver to Washington, D.C., Sept. 15 on United's Flight 564. "People had tears coming down their faces. It was as if we had a choice here, that if something were to happen we're not completely powerless.''

Peter Hannaford, a public relations consultant on the plane, wrote about the incident in a column published in The Washington Times. He described how the pilot urged passengers to use books, glasses, shoes and other instruments to attack hijackers. His message quickly spread via the Internet.

United Airlines declined comment on the incident. Spokeswoman Liz Meagher said the airline had not changed its policy on what flight crews should say, adding that what this pilot did "is probably due to duress.''

The pilot's message, while unorthodox, is part of a growing feeling among some aviation safety experts in the wake of the terrorist attacks that travelers must be more aggressive in resisting hijackers.

Some passengers on United Flight 93, one of four planes commandeered Sept. 11, apparently rushed the hijackers and are believed to have helped prevent the aircraft from reaching Washington, D.C. The plane nose-dived in a Pennsylvania field -- the only one not to hit a target.

The take-charge approach is a shift in decades-long attitudes by both pilots and passengers that cooperation is the best approach for dealing with hijackers.

But that belief "was based on the fundamental premise that the hijackers are rational human beings and want to live,'' said Raleigh Truitt, a pilot who heads his own aviation consulting firm in New Jersey.

"When you're on an airplane and it's controlled by people who are ... bent on destroying themselves and others,'' he said, "the reaction has to be different.''

John Mazor, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, said pilots are now considering the possibility of heading a public awareness campaign to emphasize that "safety is everybody's responsibility.''

"We're using the term `aggressively defend the airplane,''' Mazor said.

"The danger is we don't want passengers to suddenly be forming posses every time somebody speaks with a foreign accent,'' he added. "There has to be some way of channeling this and making sure it's not unleashed except in cases of dire emergency.''

The union is leading a campaign to improve airline safety and one of the first priorities will be to get a stronger cockpit door, Mazor said. He also said pilots are rethinking their opposition to guns in the cockpit.

"We can't limit ourselves to situations that used to work,'' he said.

This discussion of new air safety techniques come as some pilots and flight crews returning to the skies are taking extra steps to reassure rattled travelers.

Beth Rosen, a suburban Chicago passenger who flew from Paris to Cincinnati last weekend, said the Delta pilot kept his passengers apprised of every step he was taking -- even notifying them when he opened the cockpit door.

"A couple of times he would say, 'Everything's going great. We're flying fine.' You felt like they were your buddies in the cockpit,'' she said.

On the unusual trip to Washington last week, Rockel said, a flight attendant urged passengers to chat with one another and show each other family photos.

Hannaford said he thought the message from the pilot -- who thanked the passengers for being brave -- was terrific.

"There was a palpable sense of relief,'' he said. "My wife and I said, 'What an amazing thing to say.' "

Hannaford said he wrote a letter to United's chairman, praising the pilot.

"What he said was short but sweet,'' he said. "This man ought to get a medal.''

[Fubaar]

I started a thread on this very subject three or four days ago that disappeared from the Forum within an hour of my posting it.

In it, I said that most airlines would be forced to re-assess their current procedures regarding hijacking and that we were all overlooking the most obvious and cost effective anti hijacking weapon at our disposal – our passengers, who, after the events of 11 Sept, would be most unlikely to sit by passively in any future attempted hijacking.

I commented that unfortunately, 300 self appointed ‘sky marshals’ might sometimes get it wrong, over-reacting in a situation that might be nothing more than a misunderstanding, (see the post above about some hapless pax with a full bladder as a classic example of this), and that this could have tragic results.

I can only assume that my closing paragraph caused the moderator to ‘pull’ my thread, when I suggested that passengers might also over-react to any disturbance by ‘lager louts’ and so-called ‘air ragers’, possibly meting out summary justice, which, after the first such incident, might just cause other such people to re-consider, (if they are capable of thought), before exhibiting such behaviour in future.

However, reading on other threads about a number of people ‘jokingly’ saying they had bombs in their luggage in this current highly strung climate makes me realise that there are fools out there who have absolutely no idea how to behave in civilised company in any circumstances.

And my congratulations to AA pilot. A bit OTT on the flag waving American rah-rah for my taste, but he knew his audience, and it was an excellent PA, just right for the circumstances. I particularly liked the 'we're all a family here' bit.

[Tan]

Hi Fubaar

I did read your excellent thread and was quite surprised when it was pulled.

It would appear that some people in the industry are not prepared for the drastic rethinking on security that is coming our way. The train has left the station. Hello...

The next logical step is to provide flight crew with some basic "crowd control" training. A good PA is a very cheap and very effective way to tap the passenger resouce.

There is no one "Magic Bullet" that is going to solve the problem but this is a start in the right direction.

[F/O Speaking]

It looks like the whole airlines industries policies to hi-jacking are going to need a rethink. Untill now the do as you are told and don`t try to overpower the hi-jackers with force, point of view was always thought to be the best by the majority of airlines.
I don`t know, maybe it still might be in most situations.

What I am quite sure of though is can you imagine how passengers are going to react in any sort of hi-jacking situation now. They will just think back to the events in America and can you imagine what most people will think. I have to take this person out at all costs or we are all going to die! This maybe not being the best reaction for the situation in hand.

[heloplt]

Fubaar....it is our flag...we love it...we are proud of what it stands for....it is ours and we will wave it anytime, any place, and however we wish. If that kind of patriotism and love of country offends you...that is your problem...deal with it! As I recall, the Brits did a bit of the same before, during , and after a small conflict in the Malvinas....oops...the Falklands. It is our turn ol' bean. :p

[Tan]

Hey heloplt

Me thinks that you are overreacting there..

Fubaar intend, as I read it, was not anti-flag, just his opinion on his personal tastes.

His opinion is just that, his opinion....

Stay safe...

[Celtic Emerald]

I see where one captain on an American internal flight had to order the Arab pax off his flight because the other pax refused to travel with them such was their fear. It's a pity that the alot of innocent Arabs in America are being tarnished with the same brush because of the actions of a few hate crazed fanatics :mad:

Emerald

[TE RANGI]

That capt was lucky I was not his chief pilot. I would have suspended him immediately and requested him to see a psychologist to have his mental balance checked.

Hysterics, paranoia and panic have no place in the cockpit of an airliner. This type of clowns are themselves far more dangerous than a terrorist attack.

A sad aftermath to the other day's events is the number of inane, ridiculous "ideas" nitwits from all over come up with.

[HugMonster]

What a jerk. I think we're all lucky not to have you as chief pilot. :rolleyes:

[stoopid]

hey heloplt if my memory serves me right when we did our bit of "flag waving" in the Falklands i dont remember any of america "standing side by side" with us, more like "sorry" we dont wanna get involved and a lot of the finance for the ira to blow up various parts of the uk came from the good old us of a citizens :(

[tony draper]

I would have thought the people in charge of security would try a excercise like this themselves on a regular basis,send someone thru, with prohibited items in order to keep people on their toes.
It has been my experience that security is on its alert in the aftermath of some event but gradually loses its edge after a while, it the nature of the beast.

[Jetdriver]

Just my opinion, but a Pilots words to their passengers should be delivered as they always have been, to inform ( those who want to be), to reassure ( those who need to be ), and to inspire confidence ( in all).

At the moment there is a great deal of anxiety and discomfort being experienced by both passengers and crews to varying degrees.
Many changes will manifest themselves over the coming months. However I believe the Pilots words should be routine, regular, and delivered with confidence.

No doubt there are examples of this sort of "unique delivery", and notwithstanding how well it might have been received in the given circumstances, just like humour it is a subjective matter. I cannot see any reason for altering the address from that given last Month or Last year.

I think we all want the industry to settle down to some sense of normality and it is incumbent on us to lead the way.

[Roc]

Stoopid,

I remember alot of behind the scenes collaboration between the US and Britain during the Falklands war. Specifically Satellite, intel, and shipments or promises to resupply sidewinders(?) I find it sad that an English citizen would expect the US to help you fight such a "powerful Foe" at the time. Didn't you guys take on the nazi's single-handedly for quite some time there back in the summer of 1940. Too bad that spirit doesn't live in you! and you know in your heart, that we would have never left you guys to suffer any defeat in the Falklands! so put your hand back in your pocket, pull up your trousers roll up your sleeves and stop expecting help from anyone, you'll be a stronger person for it. By the way, the US appreciates all the help and cooperation from all our allies in the upcoming conflict, but do you beleive for one second we can't do this alone? Not being arrogant, just explaining the depths of our resolve here.

[NormanBates]

This is slightly off centre with this thread but it does pursue the general theme of "we're in this together". I feel for the thousands of airline employees who have lost their jobs and I wonder if the airlines had considered alternatives such as: instead of 20% staff reductions - offer 20% salary cuts until things improve. I know there are big problems with industrial organisations with this but isn't it better for morale and the fight if everyone remains fighting together instead of slowly diminishing the force. Next week it could be one of you remaining. Unusual circumstances sometimes require unusual solutions. I wish you well America and excuse me for my naivete, if that is what this is.

[TE RANGI]

I'm glad to see that air rage is no longer a concern for some of us in this industry. Instead, we're telling our passengers to rise up in arms and enquire about our seat neighbours' life. Wonderful IFE.

And fortunately, terrorists are dumb enough not to understand any of this so we'll catch them by surprise or they'll be so scared they won't dare do anything.

And of course this smart captain served a twofold purpose. Not only did he scare off the hijackers but the passengers as well. And of course the fewer the passengers, the smaller the risk.

If he's so scared to fly he may take early retirement. Oh well, he may have to, anyway.

The only thing that I missed on his announcement is saying a little prayer at the end and having everyone sing "Into the wild blue yonder".

[vertigo]

Roc,

'Do you beleive (sic) for one second we can't do this alone ?'

You are being arrogant. Remember Vietnam ?

[stoopid]

oh thats right roc support that was never publicised and no one knows about....and what about the money that came from american citizens to finance the ira cos i see you completely ignored that..probably they were all american/arabs.......in your dreams m8 :(

[gofer]

Gentlemen, Ladies,

Whatever your personal feelings of frustration at the current madness, mudslinging; especially simplistic views and beliefs that tend towards fanaticism, instead constructive discussion are not going to get us anywhere. Yanks arn't perfect and perhaps some sometimes have a tunnel vision of the complex world, Limeys can see the lost lost empire and can't do much about it, the Frogs and the others have other views.

You are in my humble opinion falling into the trap the extramists want you to fall into - risking becomming extramists.

If the tone of this thread goes on - it shold be closed because with mud slinging - they win we all loose.

Personal opinion it is sorry guys if you don't agree.

--------------
grow up or quit.

[EddyCurrents]

Stoopid
The SHAR's had the latest 9Lima's hung on them, enabling front arc emgagements. A lot else as well. Thans USA, it made life safer.

[Hoverman]

http://www.flags.net/elements/halfmast.gif

To our American friends on this thread:

Please dismiss the untimely and inappropriate anti US comments with the contempt they deserve.
Even if, like me, they hold critical views on Zionist influence on US foreign policy, the overwhelming majority of us Brits support the government's 'shoulder to shoulder' stance.

http://www.flags.net/elements/gif_flags/UNST001.GIF
God Bless and Protect America

[InFinRetirement]

Perhaps TE RANGI, when YOUR chief pilot sees your responses he will suggest that you attend his office to re-arrange your few brain cells. And while he's at it he might attempt to find where you mis-placed the muscle that was once your heart!

:mad:

[SK]

Pilot Who Told Passengers To Attack Hi-Jackers Under Investigation

From airwise news http://news.airwise.com/display/story.html?name=2001/09/1001247568.html

"United Airlines is reported to be investigating a pilot who allegedly called on his passengers to attack anyone who hijacked their flight.

The unnamed United pilot is reported to have told passengers over the intercom: "Remember, there will be one of him and maybe a few confederates, but there are 200 of you."

United Airlines says it is investigating the alleged outburst.

The incident is said to have happened on flight 564 from Denver to Washington last week, reports said.

The FBI say passengers on hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, launched a desperate fight with the terrorists after learning about other terror strikes.

United Airlines spokeswoman Liz Meagher said it is not airline policy for pilots to tell passengers how to defend themselves and suggested the pilot had probably been under stress."

[flapsforty]

.............the pilot had probably been under stress...............

Brilliant piece of deduction! :rolleyes:

Sounds to me as if this pilot has just gone one step further in doing what many of us have been doing since Sept 11.
Acknowledging the event and using the PA to create new kind of "bond" between pax and crew.

The situation we now all find ourselves in is new, and new ways of dealing with it are required imho.
My PA's (i'm cabin crew) have been different this week, more personal and less stand off-ish and pompously official,less dictating. The effect has been startling. Passengers behaviour has been radically different from before. More cooperative, less aggressive and yes, a new feeling of "we are all in this together".

Perhaps the same thing would have happened anyway, I don't know. But surely ceating a new kind of bond between pax and crew, creating the feeling that all of us on the ac have our various roles to play to make sure we get to the other end safely, is not a bad thing??

The pax get emancipated, from powerless cattle to active participants.
And while I'm not saying that "a call to arms" before every t/o is the way to go, I can follow the reasoning of this United pilot.


edited for spelling

[ 24 September 2001: Message edited by: flapsforty ]

[MasterGreen]

Well said Flaps

[Tan]

flapsforty

How true, why is the industry still thinking Pre-Sept 11? Its about time they realize the "reality" of how the passengers are going to react and provide guidance.

As usual, we have the airlines spokespeople talking about a subject that they know nothing about. Maybe that's why the industry is in so much trouble...

[HugMonster]

Flaps, I totally refuse to believe that your PA's are ever anything remotely approaching "stand-offish, pompously official or dictating" :)

[OzExpat]

The pilot was under stress? Geez, I wonder why that would be? :rolleyes: Lemme hazard a guess here. This was one of the first flights to depart since a major grounding that was incited by the worst attrocity since the holocaust. And, in some ways, potentially much worse because we suddenly had evidence that civil airlners are more efficient than gas chambers.

I don't say this to be glib, or to denegrate the multiple attrocities that comprised the holocaust. I say it merely to make the point that flight crews could not have been immune to the events that transpired on 11 September. Of course they were all under stress ... they are caring human beings!

Now, maybe I'm missing something here, but what is so wrong with empowering the pax to take care of security issues on board any flight? Yes, I would be pretty upset to be set upon for doing something that someone else regarded as suspicious. But the reality is that the end result could well be less incidence of "lager louts", "air rage" and, yes, even hijackings.

I would happily support such a call to arms, to reduce the chances of repeating those all-too-horrific acts of 11 September. I think that United Airlines needs to rethink their action against that pilot. Maybe we need to start a thread, addressed to UAL, which is a form of petition in favour of the pilot!

[Tan]

OzExpat

Great idea...

[Capt PPRuNe]

Firstly can I make it clear to the few eejits who don't have the mental capacity to realise that this is a thread about PA's and not some stupid argument about who helped who in whatever previous armed conflict. Secondly, as a British Citizen who also has a lot of family in the US I am increasingly frustrated by some of the people who make use of this free website to air their sometimes offensive views against our long standing allies, the USA.

I will post an article I read yesterday in The Sunday Times (http://www.sunday-times.co.uk) which shames the chattering classes who blame America for the terrorist attacks on the 11th September. It is self explanatory and express my feelings and views in a much more eloquent manner than I am able.

The USA saved Europe from the Nazis, defeated communism and keeps the West rich. Bryan Appleyard analyses why it has become the land of the loathed

Why do they hate America?

We have seen Pakistanis waving pictures of Osama Bin Laden and wearing T-shirts celebrating the death of 6,000 Americans. We have seen Palestinians dancing in the streets and firing their Kalashnikovs in glee. We have heard Harold Pinter and friends pleading with the West to stop a war we didn't start. A few of us have read a New Statesman editorial coming perilously close to suggesting that bond dealers in the World Trade Center had it coming.

Or consider what Elisabetta Burba, an Italian journalist, reported for The Wall Street Journal from Beirut. She saw suited, coiffed professionals cheering in the streets. Then she went into a fashionable cafe. "The cafe's sophisticated clientele was celebrating, laughing, cheering and making jokes, as waiters served hamburgers and Diet Pepsi. Nobody looked shocked or moved. They were excited, very excited," she writes.

"Ninety per cent of the Arab world believes that America got what it deserved," she is told. "An exaggeration?" she comments. "Rather an understatement."

It is horrifying but not entirely surprising; we have seen it before. I, certainly, have always lived in a world suffused with savage anti-Americanism. In my childhood the grown-ups were all convinced that the apparently inevitable nuclear holocaust would be the fault of the Americans. In my student years I saw the Vietnam war used as an excuse for violence and intimidation that would have made Mao Tse-tung proud - indeed, my contemporaries were waving his Little Red Book, his guide to mass murder, as they attempted to storm the American embassy. I saw many of those who now weep like crocodiles burning the Stars and Stripes.

How strange, I thought, even then. They wore Levi jeans, drank Coke, watched American television and listened to American music. Something inside them loved America, even as something outside them hated her. They were like fish that hated the very sea in which they swam - the whisky, in Samuel Beckett's words, that bore a grudge against the decanter. Like the Beirut elite, they wanted to have their hamburgers and eat them, to bite the Yankee hand that fed them.

But there is something more terrible, more gravely unjust here than 1960s student stupidity, more even than the dancing of the Palestinians and the Lebanese.

Let us ponder exactly what the Americans did in that most awful of all centuries, the 20th. They saved Europe from barbarism in two world wars. After the second world war they rebuilt the continent from the ashes. They confronted and peacefully defeated Soviet communism, the most murderous system ever devised by man, and thereby enforced the slow dismantling - we hope - of Chinese communism, the second most murderous. America, primarily, ejected Iraq from Kuwait and helped us to eject Argentina from the Falklands. America stopped the slaughter in the Balkans while the Europeans dithered.

Now let us ponder exactly what the Americans are. America is free, very democratic and hugely successful. Americans speak our language and a dozen or so Americans write it much, much better than any of us. Americans make extremely good films and the cultivation and style of their best television programmes expose the vulgarity of the best of ours. Almost all the best universities in the world are American and, as a result, American intellectual life is the most vibrant and cultivated in the world.

"People should think," David Halberstam, the writer, says from the blasted city of New York, "what the world would be like without the backdrop of American leadership with all its flaws over the past 60 years." Probably, I think, a bit like hell.

There is a lot wrong with America and terrible things have been done in her name. But when the chips are down all the most important things are right. On September 11 the chips went down.

The Yankophobes were too villanously stupid to get the message. Barely 48 hours after thousands of Americans are murdered, we see the BBC's Question Time with its hand-picked morons in the audience telling Philip Lader, the former US ambassador, that "the world despises America". The studio seethes with ignorance and loathing. Lader looks broken.

Or we have the metropolitan elite on Newsnight Review sneering at Dubya Bush. "So out of touch," Rosie Boycott, the journalist, hisses, "there was no sense of his feeling for people." Alkarim Jivani, the writer, wades in by trashing Bush's response when asked how he was feeling: "Well, I'm a loving guy; also I've got a job to do." Jivani thinks this isn't good enough, no emotion.

Hang on; I thought the bien- pensant left wanted restraint from Bush. And that "loving guy" quote was the most beautiful thing said since September 11. Poetically compressed, rooted in his native dialect, it evoked duty and stoicism. But these are not big values in Islington.

Or here's George Monbiot in The Guardian: "When billions of pounds of military spending are at stake, rogue states and terrorist warlords become assets precisely because they are liabilities." I see; so the United States, the victim of this attack, is to be condemned for somehow deviously making money out of it. I'll run it up the flagpole, George, but I suspect only the Question Time audience will salute.

Or here's Suzanne Moore in The Mail on Sunday: "In this darkest hour my heart goes out to America. But my head knows that I have not supported much of what has been done in its name in the past. As hard as it is, there are many who feel like this. Now is not the time to pretend otherwise." So, Suzanne, how many corpses does it take for it to be a good time to pretend otherwise? Do you laugh at the funerals of people with whom you disagreed?

Or here are two more venomous voices, both quoted in The Guardian. Patricia Tricker from Bedale: "Now they know how the Iraqis feel." And Andrew Pritchard from Amsterdam: "If the US's great peacetime defeat results in defeating America's overweening ego as the world's sole remaining superpower, it will be a highly productive achievement." Would that achievement be the dead children, Andrew, or the crushed firemen?

Anti-Americanism has long been the vicious, irrational, global ideology of our time. "It combines," says Sir Michael Howard, the historian, "the nastiest elements of the right and left." It is dangerous and stupid and, in the days after September 11, shockingly distasteful.

In the name of God, more than 6,000 noncombatants are dead, more than 6,000 families bereaved. From what dark wells of malevolence springs this dreadful reflex desire to dance on their graves?

From history, says Michael Lind, senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington: "There's an anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist and ultimately anti-modern theme that always emerges to criticise the dominant power of the day. It was directed at the cities of northern Italy, then in the 17th century at the Netherlands, then at Britain when she picked up the torch of capitalism, and now it's the US."

So at the most basic level America is loathed simply because she's on top. The world leader is always trashed simply for being the leader. The terms of the trashing are remarkably consistent. Nineteenth-century Germans, Lind points out, responded to Britain's dominance by saying, in effect, "they may be rich but we have soul". That is exactly what many Europeans and all anti-Americans are now saying: we're for God or culture or whatever against mammon. This is inaccurate - America has more soul, culture and a lot more God than any of her critics - but it is the predictably banal rhetoric of envy.

This form of "spiritual" anti-Americanism has close links with anti-semitism. "Anti-Americanism and anti-semitism are closely interwoven historically," says Tony Judt, professor of history at New York University. "Not because there are so many Jews here - there weren't always - but because both are in part about fear of openness, rootlessness, change, the modern anomic world: Jews as a placeless people, America as a history-less land."

As Jon Ronson recently demonstrated in his book, Them: Adventures with Extremists, almost every crazed cult in the world believes there is a global Jewish conspiracy run from Hollywood and Wall Street. Those bien-pensant chatterers are, I'm sure, anti-racists all, but they are swimming in deeper, darker, crazier waters than they imagine.

Judt's word "openness" is important. The fanatic - in Islington or Kabul - hates openness because he finds himself relativised and turns on the very society which permits his freedom of expression.

George Orwell noted in 1941: "In so far as it hampers the British war effort, British pacifism is on the side of the Nazis and German pacifism, if it exists, is on the side of Britain and the USSR. Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi." Elsewhere he wrote of the "unadmitted motive" of pacifism as being "hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism".

So bog-standard anti-Americanism in the developed world is a dark, irrational combination of hate-the-father/leader and infantile fantasies of rebellion and control. It is a reflex hatred of home - the place that provides succour or, in this case, Levi's. But of course there are local nuances. The French have, in contrast to the British, been consistently anti-American at governmental and diplomatic levels.

"It is a long-standing resentment born of 1940," says Judt. "A sense that France was once the universal, modern reference or model and is now just a second-class power with a declining international language to match. There is a lose analogy with British complexes about the US - us in decline, them over-mighty - but in France it is complicated by a layer of hyper-revolutionism among the intelligentsia in the years between 1947 and 1973, precisely the time when the US rise to world domination was becoming uncomfortably obvious."

In Britain we did not have the Sartres and the Derridas leading us to political and philosophical extremes. But members of the British left had something simpler: a burning hatred for America for disproving almost everything they ever believed. They so wanted rampantly capitalist America to be wrong that even Stalin hadn't quite turned them off Russia.

There was, admittedly, a pause in this crude British form of anti-Americanism. When Bill Clinton was elected president, the British left suddenly constructed a fantasy America as co-pioneer of the Third Way. The new mandarins - Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie - said that America was where it was all happening. It was a fantasy because Clinton, even to himself, was window-dressing. Capitalist, religious America had merely put on this smiling mask. When Bush was elected the left felt betrayed.

Much of the present wave of anti-Americanism, and especially the awful contempt for Bush, springs from this sense of betrayal. It also springs from an inability to escape from post-cold war attitudes. "The anxiety about American behaviour now," says Hugh Brogan, research professor of history at Essex University, "is a hangover from cold war anxiety about nuclear war."

Fear of the bomb was such that it provoked in some an abiding belief that at any moment we would be fried or irradiated because of the miscalculation of some mad American in a cowboy hat - an image burnt into many brains by Stanley Kubrick's apocalyptic film Dr Strangelove.

Somehow the Soviet Union, probably because of ignorance, escaped our disapproval. It was all wrong, if

just about understandable, then. Now it has become a pernicious and destructive failure to know a friend when we see one.

With the cold war confrontations gone, the anti-capitalism, anti- globalisation movements abandoned potentially rational, cultural and environmental anxieties in favour of a monstrous random bag of anti-American loathing. And, of course, the Middle East seemed to provide a clear case of the arrogant, bullying superpower persecuting the poor.

The idea of the bully fits neatly with one of the most grotesquely enduring of all anti-American beliefs: that Americans are all dumb Yanks. This is a delusion of the right as much as the left and it began with Harold Macmillan's absurd aspiration, later taken up by Harold Wilson, that somehow Britain should play Athens to America's Rome.

The idea was that America was this big, blundering lummox and we were these terribly refined deep thinkers. Precisely the same attitude inspires the raised eyebrows and condescending tut-tutting of leftish dinner party opinion. They're so naïve, say the chatterers, so innocent - and this, sadly, leads them to do such terrible things.

Well, I've spent some time among the American intelligentsia and I have been awestruck and humbled. They are, without doubt, the best educated, most cultivated and cleverest people in the world. They are also the most humane. There are 30 or more American universities where our best and brightest would be struggling to keep up. Apart from that, how could we be so dumb as to accuse the nation of Updike, Bellow, Roth, DeLillo, Ashbery, Dylan, of Terence Malick, The Simpsons, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola of stupidity, let alone innocence?

The roots of this are obvious. We want the bully to be thick for the same reason as we want the beautiful model to be thick. We can't bear the possibility of somebody having strength or beauty as well as brains.

In fairness, the stupidity charge is partly fuelled by one of the odder forms of anti-Americanism: American anti-Americanism. There has always been, within the US, cultivated East and West Coast elites who take the charge of stupidity seriously and feel they have to apologise for the embarrassment of the unsophisticated masses of the Midwest or deep South.

At its best this produces the brilliant satire of Randy Newman, at its worst the mandarin, Europhile posing of Gore Vidal. The masses bite back with their own form of anti-Americanism - a hatred of the elites. The Rev Jerry Falwell has already made common cause with the terrorists by blaming the attack on "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians". To Falwell modern America really is the Great Satan.

However, it is Middle Eastern anti-Americanism that is the burning issue of the moment. Again this is deeply misunderstood by the chatterers of the West. For them it is simply a matter of Israel, apparently a clear case of a surrogate bullying on America's behalf, and of oil, a clear case of American greed swamping all other human considerations.

In fact, America has always had more allies in the region than it has had enemies - although, this being the Middle East, allies become enemies and vice versa with bewildering rapidity. In the 1950s and 1960s, the US and her allies worked to subvert the secular Arab nationalist power of President Nasser of Egypt by backing Islamicist groups. Good idea, bad tactics. These groups started out pro- American and became anti. The unwelcome result was the more or less total destruction of nationalism and the creation of the powerful religious movement that now haunts Arab politics.

Israel forms a part but not the whole of this picture. Islamicism makes it a larger part because of an ancient enmity that goes back to the story of the prophet's betrayal by Jewish tribes and, more recently, to the defeat and expulsion of the Moors from Christian Europe.

In this context, Arab hardliners see Israel as a further Christian-backed offensive against the Islamic world. Even without Israel, the idea of such an offensive would still be a powerful imaginative force.

People who suggest September 11 would never have happened if America had pulled back from her support for Israel are almost certainly wrong. Israel is not even in the foreground of Bin Laden's murderous imagination. The Palestinians have actually complained that he cares nothing for them. For Bin Laden and for many more moderate Muslims, the turning point was the Gulf war in 1990-91.

"Contrary to popular belief that was the first real build-up of American military force in the region," says Dr Clive Jones at Leeds University. "This was in Saudi Arabia, a country with the holiest sites in Islam at Mecca and Medina. This created a new form of anti-Americanism that cannot in any way be related to Israel."

To these newest and most savage anti-Americans, Israel is secondary. The primary crime is blasphemy against the holiest Islamic soil. One widely circulated picture of two women GIs in a Jeep, their shirts unbuttoned to their waists, driving across the Arabian desert, was enough to inflame the sensibilities of thousands of devout Muslims and to fling the most unstable of them into the arms of the extremists. They had a point but not one that justifies murder. Islam, at heart, is as peaceful a creed as Christianity.

The truth about the Gulf war was that the Americans saved an Arab state, Kuwait, from Saddam Hussein, the most savage oppressor in the region. They would have been as surely damned for not doing this as much as they are now damned for doing it. Now they are also damned by the chatterers for keeping the pressure on Saddam. Do the chatterers know what Saddam is still doing? I do and I'm with the Americans.

Of course America has made terrible mistakes in the Middle East. Much resentment would have been and may still be prevented by a humane settlement with the Palestinians. But America was usually trying to do the right thing, always with the collusion of large sections, if not the majority, of the Arab population. As Winston Churchill said, the Americans usually do the right thing once they have tried all the alternatives.

Yet anti-Americanism has become the savage reflex of the entire region. It is the result of cynical manipulation by, mostly, appalling Arab governments and by extremists who wish to relaunch a medieval war of civilisations between Christianity and Islam.


This is the anti-Americanism that informs the ignorant dinner party guests of the West who, in their comfortable stupidity, pretend to have more in common with fanatical theocrats than they do with the land of The Simpsons and John Updike.

Perhaps worst of all is the deep vacuity of this reflex malevolence. In truth there is little that can be said about the attack on America. Our "thinkers" are trapped in a history they do not understand. They can grasp global conflict only as a series of confrontations between competing humanist ideologies - most obviously capitalism and communism. But this is something different. It is a confrontation between civilisation and an atavistic savagery that has no time for the delicate ways of life we have, at such terrible cost, constructed. Unable to see this, the chatterers must search for something to say.

"It's not for nothing they're called the chattering classes," observes Brogan.

So they blame the victim. It is a heartbreaking spectacle of delusion turned to savagery. What has America done wrong? In the days since September 11, its president and people have done nothing but demonstrate dignity and restraint. Bush will lash out, the chatterers said. But he hasn't yet. Bush is a bumbling hick, they sneered. But he isn't. Even CNN, that usually incomprehensible tumult of undigested events, has been steady and calm, devoid of all trace of prejudice, xenophobia or empty emotion.

Civilisation? It lies exactly 3,000 miles to the west of where I write and some of it is in ruins. I just wish it was closer.

I am sick of my generation's whining ingratitude, its wilful, infantile loathing of the great, tumultuous, witty and infinitely clever nation that has so often saved us from ourselves. But I am heartened by something my 19- year-old daughter said: "America has always been magic to us, we don't understand why you lot hate it so much."

Anti-Americanism has never been right and I hope it never will be. Of course there are times for criticism, lampoons, even abuse. But this is not one of them. This is a time when we are being asked a question so simple that it is almost embarrassing - a question that should silence the Question Time morons, the sneering chatterers and the cold warriors, a question so elemental, so fundamental, so pristine that, luxuriating in our salons, we had forgotten it could even be asked. So face it, answer it, stand up and be counted.

[FFFlyer]

I couldn't agree more!

[geiginni]

Interesting article. I find it amazing how much Europeans like to vent anger at America's involvement in modern world events and criticize our nation's policies toward so many developing nations. Need the citizens of Europe reminding of how much of the current state of affairs in the world are the extended results of their failed imperialism?

That can certainly be said of the middle east. Do the people of Britain need reminding that the borders of the middle east and the people whom were placed in power within those borders was largely the responsibility of their beloved Mr. Churchill. Even in Africa, the atrocities and corruption of so many nations there were the result of such poor management by the English, French, Dutch, and Belgians that colonized them. Even our involvment in Vietnam was the result of the abuses incurred by the French colonials, whom pulled out when things got a little too hot to handle. Or to even look as far back as the Spanish colonial rule that has left hundreds of years of political instability in Central and South America.

America's experiments in colonialism have not had nearly such horrific results. The actual territories that we have held (with the exception of Cuba and the Phillipines) continue to be stable, friendly places, albeit mostly island groups in the South Pacific that maintain their stability due to our support and stewerdship.

I believe that if angry citizens of Europe wish to look for someone to blame for much of the instability and danger in the world today, they need only look as far as their own failed attempts at imperialism, and the mess that resulted from bringing these places modern infrastucture, technology, and politics - then leaving these places behind with no afterthought whatsoever at to how these nations would remain stable without their oversight.

[PAXboy]

In a discussion with a woman on Saturday, who was voicing concern about flying (UK internal..??) it was unfortunate that the social circumstances did not permit me to tell her the truth in all but the most polite manner ....

If you wish to reduce your risk of dying in the next 12 months. Do not drive your car. Do not travel as a passenger in a car and be particularly careful when a pedestrian. In the next month, more people will die around the world from the car, than died on 11th Sept. at WTC/Pentagon.

Whilst death by car may seem less awful than death by terrorist flying bomb - it is still death and families grieve the same way.

[jdoe]

O for a reasuring PA, I have just departed an EK flight where the capt. departure PA was only conveyed in Arabic and no PA atall on decent. So much for reasuring nervous pax!

[thadiashadow]

Captain Pprune.
I have got to take issue with the Sunday Times article you posted.

"America has more soul, culture and a lot more God than any of her critics"

Do you believe this? Isn't this more of the flag-waving nationalism that we all have to overcome if this world is going to get anywhere? People are people the world over. Some have soul, some have culture, some have God. National boundaries - governments and geography - have nothing to do with it. I'm a humanist, so I don't pray for those who died on the 11th - but I think of them. They were individual people whose lives were horrifically cut short - they deserve our utmost respect. Their families deserve our utmost compassion. And the world deserves that we attempt to be rational. We can talk about this. We can say that the government of the US is founded on basic ideas of freedom and democracy. We can say (funny no-one has mentioned it so far) that rulers and governments that deny women a franchise or an education stifle and kill the voice of half the world. We can nevertheless point out that US foreign policy has preferred short term gain over long term benefits (and let's not forget what that has a cost in lives or that the position of enslaved women can never have figured in US backing of the Mujahadeen). We can also point out, WITHOUT ANY DISRESPECT to those who died or to their families that some people in the US have quite legally funded terrorism through Noraid. Also, we should remember that in our life times (at least in mine) mass murder has been carried out in Cambodia, Ruanda and Indonesia. That's not to belittle the lives that were lost last week, it's to put it in perspective. I feel the loss of life last week very personally and strongly, and I realise to my shame that it's because I feel those people's lives were closer to my own than some of the others who have died senselessly, in huge forgotten numbers in the past 40 years.

Our world is a messy hypocritical ideological melting pot, so let's give over appeals to nationalism. If you believe that people are homogenous, if you belive that in all their complexity and differences a mass of people can be represented by a single government, by an accident of geography, your simplicity and naivity makes atrocities and terrorism possible.

Thadiashadow.

[caulfield]

First of all,my hat off to the eloquent UAL pilot.I find it abhorrent that he may now be subject to some sort of enquiry.
What I want to see is all US pilots stand together and take control of their lives and those of their passengers.We must be first to take voluntary pay cuts and help in the economic survival of our airlines.In return,forget the 20% pay-back fund or whatever.What we must fight for is total control of how we,as pilots,run the damn operation from departure gate to arrival gate.With interference from no-one.WE're the ones up there that face any future threat,not some desk wonder on the 33rd floor.If the Captain wishes to talk to his/her passengers about any subject whatsoever,then as far as I am concerned,thats his/her prerogative.And everybody including the CEO should butt out.
We have asked for firearms and we should get them.WE must ballot members on more issues including flt deck doors and not rest until we get what WE want.In short it is up to us now through ALPA to take control of how each and every flight is run.I want a future where ALPA talks directly with the US Congress for any measure deemed necessary by the pilots.

[BARABUS]

I have a couple of observations about the Sunday Times article. Firstly there is no doubt that the U.S. is a hugely successful country and I am personally grateful to be living in one of the far flung outposts of its empire. This success however has, in no small part been fuelled by the supply of cheap oil from the Middle East. In the seventies, while Bin Laden and the West were getting rich on construction projects and cheap oil, the tensions began to rise in Saudi society over the American presence. As the article concedes, the final turning point for many a moderate Muslim was the Gulf War. The article reflects the marketing campaign which was administered to the people of the West citing the liberation of a sovereign state as the reason for intervention. Let's face it - the Gulf War was about securing oil supply. Maybe Saddam Hussein was allowed to live because an emasculated tyrant in the region would justify a continued U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia thereby securing the oil supply for a good many more years. An alternative energy source may be the only way to ease those tensions.
Why the unblinking U.S. military support for
Israel? What if the military support was cut off and instead the U.S. helped fund a U.N. peacekeeping force to defend both sides' territory and security. This wouldn't completely stop the fighting but it would probably help stop extremists from looking further afield than their own neighbourhood.
The partition of Palestine into Arab and Israeli States was the U.N.'s instinctive decision in 1947 and, short of the total annihilation of one of the parties, seems the only option.
I don't believe in Yank - bashing, I think we owe them big time but at the same time this latest attack did not come out of the blue.

[flapsforty]

a slight aside from the main trust of this thread:

caulfield you say "........What we must fight for is total control of how we,as pilots,run the damn operation from departure gate to arrival gate.With interference from no-one.WE're the ones up there that face any future threat.........."

With all due respect Sir, but aren't you forgetting a rather pivotal group of your colleagues here?
How about your cabin crew?
The ones that got their throats cut first?

Professional FA's have a lot to add to the safety of the operation, and as they are right up there with you, facing any future threat, I very strongly feel they (we) should be involved closely in how "the damn operation is run from gate to gate"

[SKYDRIFTER]

The real tragedy in this matter is that the sky-rage events have not yet resulted in training for cabin problems or crew intervention.

Things such as scalding coffee and fire extinguishers are great weapons for defense. Seat cushions are good shields from knives.

In the USA, people are asked to operate emergency exits and doctors are commonly solicited for an ill passenger.

If the certified law enforcement passengers were given a price break or the likely able-bodied-passenger was simply selected to be on standby fo an intervention, the hijackings would be far less attractive.

There are pragmatic solutions available.