The Volokh Conspiracy

Kinsley makes an interesting point (several of them), but the real question is about the crews' new training and instructions. Cockpit doors are now secured, so there is much less likelihood of hijackers taking over the pilot's seat, especially if crews are now instructed to resist such efforts. If crews are indeed going to engage in active resistance, then it might continue to make sense for passengers to remain seated. Imagine, for example, that a pilot is going to put the plane into a dive in order to knock hijackers off their feet. You would certainly want the passengers to be belted for their own safety.

Government instruction books are generally designed for everybody, especially people at the lowest level: Surviving Terrorism for the Complete Idiot. For such people the best advice probably is to stay calm and not do anything. There will always be others who will develop, on their own, some idea of what to do, and they may well be right. They have a sense (made of a mixture of intelligence and character) of when it is best to go by the rules and when not. There are no rules that can tell you when not to obey the rules. Bottomfish might be a complete idiot or he might not.

How typical of our paternalistic government and "liberals" like Kinsley to maintain one has a duty to be a victim. Remain calm until the Jihadi cuts your throat or dial "911" and wait for the police to arrive. If they get to you late, enjoy being a statistic.

Grant Jones: next time read with your reading classes on. In this case, it is the "liberal," Kinsley, who is objecting to the government's advise not to resist, and the conservatives such as those whom Bush apppinted to run TSA who are advising passengers not to resist.

I am keeping this post as simple as possible so much is left unsaid including the parallels with CCW laws, hostage situations, and the choices of the WTC employees.

Consider the four flights. Three of them reached targets and the fourth did not. Why? Did the air force destroy it? Did the FBI detain the hijackers before boarding? Did CIA provide intelligence preventing the hijackers from entering the country? Did anything the government do cause it not reach its target?

The fourth flight was brought down by citizens not otherwise organized in any formal way. It was brought down by the militia. That is the militia in the original constitutional sense whose training over the past decades consisted of remain calm and obey authority.

So why did they act? Look at the game theory. Here I am going to ignore the choices made at an individual level for brevity and consider the passengers as a group which cannot be done in the case of workers in the WTC before collapse. Each plane's passengers had 3 basic choices:

1. Follow orders.
2. Revolt.
3. Make no choice.

Option 3 in this case is the same as following orders although it is not always so. For decades people have been taught in hijackings to follow orders or they are likely to be killed. In this case, the people on plane four had outside knowledge that doing so was likely to get them killed anyway so attempting to gain control of the plane is more attractive to ensure survival then any other option available to them. This goes against literally a lifetime of being taught otherwise. In my eyes, they are doubly heroes.

Our response has been to create the DHS with various minor adjustments to other agencies and curtail enumerated and unenumerated rights. The citizens making up the militia are still taught the same things which allowed three of the flights to reach their targets despite the fact that they were directly responsible for preventing one of the planes from reaching its target.

By definition the unexpected can not be prepared for. There is a place for individuals alone or in groups to take decisive action when facing the unexpected and we are artificially limiting their abilities and options.

Jasminded, Oops my bad. My prescription must be over ten-years-old.

However, I'm still disgusted that the government, at all levels and regardless of which party is in power, expects the American people to behave as helpless victims.

This is a total non-story. Whatever some dipstick government publication may say to employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (!), the obvious fact is that 9/11 copycat hijackers will certainly face desperate and homicidal business travelers, reinforced cockpit doors, and (quite possibly) gun-wielding flight crew.

Incidentally, the idea that an airliner flight crew can "throw the plane around" to disable hijackers is not so simple. Modern airliners are tough critters, but they aren't designed for significant aerobatics -- "throwing one around" turns airline pilots into test pilots and is a very definite risk to the belted passengers. The innocent passengers may cheer to see terrorists thrown to the floor, but will be less happy when the wings come off.

Perhaps airline pilots are now trained to engage in such maneuvers in a way that stays within the airliners' design limits. Seems like that would be a good idea. I just don't know.

Incidentally, the airliners that hit the WTC -- and particularly the second one, moving at an estimated 503 mph -- were in some danger of disintegrating before impact, because of the aerodynamic stresses caused by high speed at low altitude.

Is Kinsley at all distressed that the Department of Agriculture paid someone to write hijacking survival guidelines? Or that they paid someone to dump them on to a website? Though my job requires travel, I've managed to muddle through without needing such guidelines. I'm sure employees of the USDA can continue to grade meat without them too.

I suppose I should be happy USDA didn't call in a consultant to update its hijacking guidelines after 2001.

Speaking as a pencil-necked coward, I'm confident that I would still make the effort to kill a hijacker without guidelines. I have complete confidence my fellow Americans in the USDA would do the same, even if the obviously pre-9/11 manual advises something else.

I don't see anything wrong with capable passengers taking things into their own hands, especially in the era of reinforced cockpit doors, but how the hell is that the lesson of Flight 93? In Flight 93, attacking the hijackers resulted in the plane going into the ground. Sure, it would probably have gone down anyway, and the passengers' actions may have prevented more deaths, but I'd be surprised to find that many VC readers are utilitarians (that would certainly imply that the commenters on this post comprise an entirely different population than the commenters on the Rand posts a few weeks ago). It seems to me that the main lesson from Flight 93, and the other hijacked flights, has been learned by the government and the airlines: don't let anyone into the cockpit, no matter what they threaten to do outside of the cockpit. If a flight taught that passenger resistance is important, it was the Richard Reid flight, but not Flight 93.

As The River said:

Tex Johnson was the chief test pilot for Boeing in 1955 during the tests of the Boeing 707. To understand the environmemnt, the Britsh Comet had been the first commercial jet passenger plane. However it developed skin metal fatigue and several disappeared over the Atlantic before it was grounded. The 707 was the second plane. The CEO of Boeing asked Tex to show it off for an aviation convention and the big hydroplane races on Lake Washington. With 500,000 people watching, Tex rolled a 707 prototype 360 degrees. The CEO and the fans were shocked. When asked by the CEO, "what the hell did he think he was doing", Tex replied, "Selling airplanes".. The rest is history. Jet aviation continued.

Here is the link to the footage

Suppose there were two airlines: one that encouraged all law abiding passengers to carry firearms onboard, and one that followed normal screening. As a passenger, which would you choose? As a hijacker?

On the other hand you can porpoise 747 without causing much structural stress and at the same time, spread a jacker across the ceiling. :)

If Jackers have control of the passenger section and are ramming a cart into the cockpit door, some maneuvers and a call for help while you look for the nearest 4000 feet of flat spot (runway) seems reasonable in these post 9/11 times.

It is VITALLY important to engage them before they have you in a position of control. Every minute makes fighting back harder and less likely to succeed.

The Vomit Comet was a 707.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomit_Comet

Drill Sarge:

One detail of your Comet story are a little bit off: there were not "several disappearances over the Atlantic". One Comet crashed shortly after take-off in Calcutta, and two others crashed in Italy in 1953 and 54. After the third crash the fleet was grounded. It came back into service in 1958 as the Comet 4, with round windows. The same basic supersturcture is still flying today as the BAE Nimrod, the RAF's main recon and ELINT vehicle.

Kinsley conveniently skipped over the following paragraph.

"The guidance below focuses on avoiding violence and achieving a peaceful resolution to a hijacking. This guidance was developed prior to September 11, 2001 when two hijacked airliners were flown into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. Since then, there has been considerable public discussion of a more active and aggressive reaction to the initial announcement that a plane is being hijacked. As of this writing, the U.S. Government has not developed new guidelines for how to react to a hijacking. The appropriate reaction may depend upon the presumed purpose of the hijacking -- the hijackers' goal a suicide mission to use the airplane itself as a bomb, take hostages to gain publicity for a political movement, or a simple desire to escape to another country."

Any rules telling airline passengers how to deal with hijackers are by definition public. Future hijackers will read the rules and design strategies to get around them, and passengers will not know what these strategies are. But resourceful passengers can still make their own judgments and at least prevent the greater evil, as seems to be the case with United 93 where at least the hijackers didn't get the chance to crash the White House.

The Vomit Comet flies a parabolic trajectory to get basically zero g. I suspect just about any airliner could do the same -- I know for a fact you can do it in a Cessna 152 -- but this is hardly a maneuver that would stop determined hijackers. They would just have to hang on to their weapons. Or perhaps use them in midair!!

My original point was a small one: airliners are not well suited to the kind of violent maneuvering that would be necessary to incapacitate terrorists. Your car would be a much better venue for that. Tex Johnson's barrel roll, and the Vomit Comet, certainly don't indicate otherwise. These are exceedingly gentle maneuvers.

It's possible airline pilots have been trained to conduct anti-terrorist maneuvers within the airplanes' structural limits. But I would have loved to have sat in on the meeting with the insurance company before they actually practiced them.

By the way, I strongly suspect that you cannot "porpoise" a 747 in a manner sufficient to "spread a hijacker across the ceiling" without imposing significant and potentially dangerous structural stress. Probably the last thing you want in a big airliner is oscillations like that. The safety factors associated with large control surface deflections are generally based on deflecting the surface ONCE, not back and forth repeatedly. The latter is an entirely different structural ball game, and it's probably much more dicey the bigger and faster the aircraft gets.

But I don't fly the big stuff, so I could be wrong about this. I'll ask a guy I know who does.

As a former US Airways airline pilot active on 9/11 but not today (market forces at work) and before that a USAF fighter pilot, I must throw in my two cents.

1) Every bit of official guidance to airline pilots is vetted by the FAA, the general council of the airline (a large corporation accountable to stockholders), and large insurance companies. If you think these 3 are going to officially sanction some wild maneuvers to counter a highjackering, you’re watching too much TV. Of course, just as the flight 93 passengers eventually did, thinking for yourself will be the best course of action in such a situation.

2) Many, if not most airline pilots have zero experience with aerobatics, high performance maneuvering, or max-performing any airplane, let alone a very large one. It’s still not part of the mandatory training and probably never will be (see #1), though in my opinion it would save some lives, though not many. Few accidents would be prevented by it, but some might be (e.g. US Airways Flt 427, American Flight 587).

3) The percentage of US domestic flights today with either armed crewmembers or air marshals is probably still very small (less than 10% I’d wager). I’m certain data on that is (properly) not available, but that’s my sense.

4) Cockpit doors prior to 9/11 were very flimsy affairs that in fact had large blowout panels designed to blow into the cockpit should a rapid decompression occur from a broken cockpit window. While they did lock, they would not have kept anyone out for long, though the fire ax has always been an available defensive weapon in there.

5) None of the cockpit crews resisted on 9/11. Why? Prior to then, highjackings in the US were either some whack job wanting publicity for some cause or a free ride somewhere, or an extortion attempt. Official guidance reflected the fact that everyone was safer on balance if they did not resist but in fact tried to keep the situation as non-confrontational as possible. Suicide missions were never really considered. Our world changed forever on that day.

6) While it’s comforting to imagine that no pilot is going to open the door during a cabin emergency today, the reality is there are many couples flying around with one in the cockpit and the other in the back.

7) Finally, we’re fighting the last war. Smart terrorists (and nothing they’ve done makes me think they are not smart) are going to move on to greener pastures. I can think of at nearly countless ways to accomplish similar results. We’re a relatively free society, and thus we are going to be more vulnerable to terrorists than a less free one. That’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make.

The only time I saw an open cockpit was on a flight from Pisa, Italy to Milan. I happened to be a row 1 and was fascinated by it. It never occured to me anything might happen.

By the way, 9/11 was a one-trick pony. No one will sit there and put up with anything. Just take a look at the list of cranks who have had their, er, butts kicked for acting up.

Yeah, I like the idea of hunting knives in the seat pockets.

You would have to walk through metal detectors on the way out of the aircraft. The airline wouldn't want people stealing all of their titanium hunting knives [every ounce counts on an airliner].

-dk

Suppose there were two airlines: one that encouraged all law abiding passengers to carry firearms onboard, and one that followed normal screening. As a passenger, which would you choose? As a hijacker?

The one that encourages personal weapons, of course.

"In Flight 93, attacking the hijackers resulted in the plane going into the ground."

No, waiting until the hijackers had control of the cockpit before taking them on resulted in the plane going into the ground. If the passengers had jumped on them when they first started slashing with those silly little knives, the pilots would never have been interfered with, 20-40 passengers would have needed a few stitches each after landing, and the airline would have had to cut the carpet out of the airplane and stuff it in body bags.