Attack best form of defence if hijacked?

[Centaurus]

Recent events prompts revisiting of Ops Manual advice on how to deal with hijackers. Some operators have opted to stay with pre-September 11th contempory advice to play softly-softly games with any hijacker - ask about his wife and kids and generally appease the idiot hoping that he will have a guilty conscience and finally surrender to the best looking flight attendant.

With cloth-headed religious nutters on the rise, this may be the worst advice possible. After all, they want to die and take everyone with them to paradise. Surely then the priority would be for every man and his dog on the aircraft to unstrap and do in the hijacker before he and his mates do in the whole aircraft.

I wonder if any airline management has the courage to bite the bullet on this subject (no pun intended) and promulgate to crews that in event of a hijack where motives and intended course of action of the hijackers are unknown, that immediate attack - not appeasement - may be the best form of defence?

I recall a Pprune post last year that advocated serious defensive retaliation by all on board with all possible weapons at their disposal. Seemed a sensible idea at the time. But I doubted then if managements had the courage to include this advice in Ops Manuals.

[A and C]

I would not post my intensions on this or any other open forum.

[18-Wheeler]

Agreed. I know what I'm going to do, and I won't be posting it here.

[RatherBeFlying]

Looks to me that the SLF clued themselves in right after 9/11. Haven't heard of any hijacker that has not been mobbed by SLF except for those grabbed by sky marshals first.

After a few years pass, budget cuts will decimate the sky marshal program as happened before and the SLF will be it.

Still don't see any flicker of recognition from those on high that seat back cards and pre-takeoff cabin briefings should include anti hijack procedures.

Even an AK47 can't do much when you're lying beneath a half dozen bodies:D

[Konkordski]

Hate to point it out to you "chaps in charge" but if the balloon goes up on your flight then I can assure you that you aren't going to be in charge of jack sh*t.

Now unless you're planning to stop flying the aircraft and succumb to some delusion that you'll be able to overpower an armed individual (the portliness of a fair number of cockpit crew members makes it difficult for me to imagine) then in my opinion, for what it's worth, the passengers are your best and (arguably) your only option.

[Earthmover]

Excuse me? Is this for real? All due respect to the valuable points made, but forgive me - this is a public forum, and our proposed response to terrorism, its effectiveness or otherwise, should not, ever, be in the public arena.

[RatherBeFlying]

Earthmover, if we're going to put in measures to encourage and guide the passengers in repelling hijackers, how do we keep it confidential:confused:

[Earthmover]

I take your point - and it's a valid one. However, if that is to happen, then it needs to be an industy wide unified IATA/ICAO/whatever - led approach which is on safety cards, tickets etc. All we do by bantering here is to demonstrate disunity and chaos.

[powerless]

I am sure there are plenty of other regular SLF's who like me have thought through the reaction to any possible terrorist threat and think we are better to try to restrain the terrorist than just sit there and expect the crew to handle it.

I think it is fair to say that an attack on FAs or an attempt to enter the cockpit will get an instant response from enough of the SLFs to get the job done.