Forget about marshalls
 

Marshalls are a short term fix.

The simplest security fix is to forget about marshalls and implement the measures below.

1. Secure and seal the cockpit from the rest of the aircraft while any member of the public is on board. This would mean that the cockpit would have to be larger because it would have to incorporate a bathroom and possibly a small kitchen as well. The pilots should have no discretion to open the door even if a member of the crew, or a passenger, is threatened.

2. All crew should carry a remote transmitter to discretely alert the cockpit that there is a situation in the aircraft be it a hijacker or an unruly passenger.

3. The cockpit should be able to view the entire aircraft using CCTV to assess any situation on board the aircraft and determine whether to make an unscheduled landing and alert the appropriate authorities on the ground.

4. If there is an extreme situation on board the aircraft, the cockpit should be able to utilise knockout gas throughout the aircraft and land at the nearest airport.

Comments are welcome.

You are opening a whole new can of worms with this. Where there is a will, there is a way. If the terrorists wish to get inside they will. Plastic explosives, blow torch, posing as pilots with stolen key cards for access, etc. Bank vaults and safes were once considered impossible to crack and now we have more advanced robbers.

Also costs not feasible because cockpit would have to be very big. Pilots will need berths to sleep, room to get up and stretch their legs, and most importantly- how would they get their food during flight? A sliding window liek they serve prisoners? Terrorists could even poison pilots and plane would go down on their own anyway.


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"Fly me to the moon and let me earn alot of miles."

In response:

Plastic explosives and blow torches:
How do they get these items past the gate and increased security measures?

Cost not feasible:
Sacrificing a bit of space is a small price to pay to avoid the cost of another September 11.

Food during flight:
It's already been suggested that they have the food within the cockpit. This way there is no possibility of the food being poisoned. Also food served doesn't have to be exclusively hot. However, assuming the worst and the pilots are unconscious, the aircraft can be equipped to be flown remotely.

I like the knock out gas idea! It should be used if any of the following is witnessed:

1. Hijackings
2. 2 or more pax picking noses (or toes)
3. Anytime a "Baldwin Brothers" movie is screened in the main cabin
4. If they run out of coffee

[This message has been edited by skofarrell (edited 09-13-2001).]

Pay anyone working on the tarmac $5,000



Where was your plan on September 10?

Hey, it's just an illusion of safety. Freedom has its risks, and we need to be willing to accept those risks.

I, for one, am not willing to give up my way of life for the ridiculous illusion that I'm being "protected." I want my freedom, and I'm willing to take the risks.

Where are all the Americans? It's sickening how many of you are willing to trade away your liberties in the midst of this hype.

Give the pilots weapons (guns) and teach them how to use them. If the door to the cockpit is breached, let the pilot(s) shoot to kill.

I want to give my 2 cents:

There is no point in banning knives (at least small knives). 3-5 terrorists holding knives are NOT able to take over a plane if passengers and crews resists. It is just historically it is safer not to fight the hijackers. I remember from past that airline could could get into legal troubles if they fight hijackers, which often cause more problems.

Imagine your self on a plane, when hijackers announced that they have a bomb onboard. A knife does not make any difference, as crew and passengers can easily overpower hijackers with knives. Before 9/11/01, I would not fight hijackers, as most hijacks resolves peacefully. What makes you decide to fight or not depends on your belief whether hijackers will go on a suicide mission. NOT a knife.

blocking access to cockpit will not work for the same reason. If a hijacker says he will blow up the plane if you don't give him access. Do you take a chance? it depends on if you belive the hijacker or not. Blocked cockpit don't make any difference.

I am sorry if I am not able to explain this well. thanks for hearing me out.

Hey Mori -

Air Marshalls are a start.

Pilots would need HEAVY DUTY psychological training to be able to keep flying a plane as someone in the "back of the bus" is killing a passenger every 5 minutes until he does as he is told.

Knock out gas? I can carry in my carry-on all I need to feed into the onboard air system, and not worry about gas.

A terrorist who kills a sleeping passenger is still killing a sleeping passenger. In fact, the presence of such a system would reduce the manpower needed to keep control by the hijackers.

Ban knives? Almost worthless. I am sure some of you have seen the training session where they are taught to take control of the plane with NO weapons. The fire extinguisher is a lethal weapon of choice. Then, the fire axe, and finally, oxygen cannisters from the plane make for just a dandy bomb.

As for attacking the hijackers - yes, I would, but be mindful: It is typical that in a situation where maybe three people are carrying out the hijacking, it is likely that at least two others amongst the passengers are "sleeper" partners who can keep an eye on things and help feed the control psychology. Imagine 20 people rushing to the front of the plane, going after 3 men. The first people could be badly hurt or even killed, but the group has good chances of succeeding - as long as there are not two "unknown" hijackers slashing from the back.

Sorry to be so plain spoken, but that is how a successful takeout works.

Any system that you but in place, you must be prepared to have used against you.

Suggestions?

Full satellite tracking - it is useless that the plane must rely on the transponder being activated to advise the ATC's that it should be closely watched.

Move the bathrooms away from the front of the plane so that they are not within an arm's reach of the pilots door. As soon as the seatbelt light goes off, two people in First go to the WC's, open the doors a few minutes later as the attendants are serving the other passengers, and with the passageway partially blocked, rush the front.

Make the door a more difficult thing to get through, but also give it less likelyhood to have passenger traffic near it.

Instead of keying in a four digit code to alert ATC, have the pilot do a "double pull" plug system - you simply pull a pin that is on a cord attached to you, much like on a Jetski- only, the pilot has two, so that there is no "false alert" if he forgets to "log out" of his seat before getting up to eat, got to the WC, etc.

Speaking of logging out - pilots could be required to enter a code every 30 minutes, let's say, to ensure that they are still the ones flying.

Anyway - these and many more things that can be done, and for very little money, which for some reason, appears to be important to those that made things the way they are now.

These security fixes should not begin at the airport. Air marshalls, on-board security, even ground security/screening, while important no doubt, should be all last ditch efforts to maintain a safe environment. The government and others should consider how to make travel safer before travel actually begins.

My two miles...


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"What do you mean you didn't get miles for that?!"

I heard an interview with a representative from a US pilot's union.

He talked about a bulletin the union issued suggesting rapid cabin depressurization as being the recommended tactic.

Did anyone else see that?

did not hear the quote , but would agree with it if it is rapid & gets to 12k ft in a hurry. i am uncomfortable in la pas bolivia @ 13,3 k ft [per flight crew in cock pit] . however, if the idea is to knock out everyone & make the young perps unconsious , i would rather have my knife & be awake.

I agree with JohnnyP.

Having said that however, methods of containing any situation need to be considered in the event of that situation arising.

Banning implements such as tweezers, nail clippers, knitting needles etc will have no practical effect. If a person wants to, he/she can be very creative about what can be used as a weapon. An obvious example is a pen.

Not just looking back on 11 Sept but to any hijacked airplane, what measures could have be taken to neutralise the terrorists?

(edited for typos)

[This message has been edited by Moriarty (edited 09-15-2001).]

While stuck in Miami, I was staying with a good friend who is a pilot, a Jet pilot instructor, and someone who's expertise and experience I trust.

We had lots of long discussions about what can and can't be done to secure things "day 2".

We both agreed that the airline insustry is not going to dramatically redesign the aircraft in their fleet, nor are they going to retire working, million dollar jets that are not up to some new utopian standard.

After going around and around, we came up with the following conclusions:

1) Knockout gas - while we agreed an intruder disabling system makes sense, and is easy to do, the airline would probably face lawsuits from injured passengers in the long run, and it may not be worth it.

2) Better cockpit doors - while a good idea, the flight crew might need to use a bathroom, breeching any security a reinforced door would create. And just how much reinforcing do you think can be done without an entire cockpit structure redesign. Again, any change that requires massive refit of the aircraft is impractical.

The only idea that we both considered to be reliable and relatively inexpensive was one that would not protect the passengers but would prevent the type of "aircraft as missile/bomb" disasters we just saw:

3) Autopilot/remote pilot lockout - many aircraft flying today have the ability to land on autopilot at properly equipped airports. The flight crew and the FA's should have the ability to punch in a code that essentially engages the autopilot and locks out all on-board controls. A minor upgrade to the aircraft systems to allow this lockout feature, and also to allow autopilot commands to be sent from properly authorized ground control systems is very easily accomplished. A plane could not be controlled in this way unless the pilot or FA engaged the system (preventing ground controls that are infiltrated from crashing aircraft at will). This change, compared to the costs of the others discussed, was practical and do-able in our opinion. It may not save passengers being stabbed or blown up, but it would prevent a maniac from taking control of the aircraft.

I agree with your suggestions however I would add that the pilots be able to lock-in a flight plan that would require a speccial code to un-lock. In both NYC & DC, the highjackers had to turned the planes around to hit their targets. Also a re-enforced door, if bombed, may provide pilots with an opportunity to alert authorities & find an area that is safe for land.

Consider for a moment the case of El Al. More terrorists want to hijack / bomb El Al than all other airlines combined, yet they haven't succeeded. Why?

Because El Al has the political will to do security properly. I am not going to go into the details of the El Al security model here, because 95% of it is unseen, and should remain that way.

But bear in mind it is possible to approach full security with passengers checking in less than 2 hours prior to the flight, and only a small percentage (under 10%) of pax having their bags hand searched.

They do not outlaw razors or plastic knives. On board they have metal silverwear and corkscrews.

Yes, they do a lot of other things, but they do them without passenger inconvenience.

It is possible.

2 Many-

Inteersting you brought that up. One thing we've been seeing a lot of on all of the news channels are reports on El Al security, with perhaps a tacit suggestion that this is what real airport security is. I agree, BTW.

However, does anybody have, for comparitive purposes, information on, say, the # of flights El Al operates per day, and the number of airports they serve, versus the # of flights/airports served by US carriers? For that matter, how much (on a rough percentage basis) of the cost of El Al security is absorbed by the Israeli government, and what would those dollar figures translate to if applied to the whole US system?

While I'm all for tighter security, and agree that there is a certain amount of "political will", as you call it (I'd call it a justifiable lack of political correctness) necessary to restore it, I think an examination of those figures, on a comparative basis, would reveal the virtual impossibility--both in terms of financial and human resources--of a constant El Al type of arrangement here in the U.S.

The real solution is to solve the problem on why we have terroism in the first place.

Security and military strikes will only go so far. A war on terroism w/o a political solution is a war we will loose.

We should tighten airport security but that will not stop attacks by other means on US soil.

I still go back to the simple but probably effective idea of having cameras on board. You have one on virtually every ATM in this country but we don't have any on planes. In between the cameras and cell phones on board working with ground law enforcement, they could possibly see how many people are attacking, the weapons used, how to best fight back and maybe avoid the final tragedy.

This would have also helped with cases of air rage in the past as it would have been possibly if the passengers were out of control or not. Sure discussion before was about invasion of privacy or who would want to sit and watch the video of a 14 hour transpacific flight to Asia. Now, I suppose many are asking what really happened on board and would like to have been be able to best avoid the incident again.


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"Fly me to the moon and let me earn alot of miles."

That sounds too much like those in the middle east quoted after the attack saying that the US is really at fault for this because of it's policies.

Bull****!

We will find the people with no regard for innocent human life, lock them in a room far far away and then let them practice suicide bombing on each other all they want.

No one's political agenda makes this kind of attack on humanity acceptable or allowed to be an excuse in any way.

If you want an easy guidebook in the world to seperate Right and Wrong - look at who the groups target civillian or military. As clear as night and day.

If I recall from a very good interview with an El Al security consultant in Conde Nast Traveler Magazine not so long ago, El Al has several "rings" of security, beginning with airport access roads, with each ring collapsing until you get on the plane. Yes, many are invisible to the pax, but many are quite visible if one is paying attention, and most of these are certainly not trade secrets. They're more like best practices. A lot of these measures do not inconvenience pax, but they do require pax to check in MORE THAN 2 HOURS in advance. And, as far as I was concerned, they seemed to profile and search MORE THAN 10% of the pax on the four flights I took into and out of Tel Aviv. Maybe if the plane is full of young Jewish American business school students attending a high tech investment conference in Israel, less than 10% of those pax get search, but they certainly search more than 10% of the non-Jews on the plane.

Realistically, El Al can do it because it is a small airline and don't have too many flights a day. The interrogators and the hand searchers (and they search every single item once they've identified you as a risk) are trained professionals in Israel. They have not only completed military service, they are patriotic and have no problem inconveniencing anyone if it meant protecting Israel's national integrity.

Going to an El Al model at every airport in the United States is going to be difficult, if not impossible. From a human resources perspective, we don't have the trained people YET. Some renovations to the plane would also be necessary. How many commercial planes are flying in the US right now? The cockpits need to be reinforced. The cargo hold might need to have special compartments/containers that are blast proof. Then there's the issue of armed marshalls. There's at least one armed air marshall on board every El Al flight. And I believe that the last line of defense is that El Al pilots, all of whom are ex-military, are also armed. I'm not sure if US airline pilots are ready mentally or want to be carrying guns in the cockpit.

I should add that I never missed any of my El Al flights because I either got to the airport at least 2.5 hours in advance or I got to the airport right before the check-in counter closed and everyone else had already been questioned and searched. And once I got on the El Al flights, I felt very safe.

El Al has indeed got the perfect solution, you don't have to fight a hijacker on board becuase he/she will NEVER get on board. MSNBC did a bit on them, the ground checks are very thourough, it is impossible to prevent a disaster while sitting in a pressurized tin can flying miles high just under the speed of sound without police, army etc... IF something happens there no technology will be able to stop it, every measure you take will be useless after a short time when someone figures out how to bypass it. The current US measures of stopping problems BEFORE take off are IMHO the best and only solutions, no matter how much trouble and delays it causes.

Scott --

Unfortunately, the current security measures being implimented by the US would not have done anything to stop the tragedy of what happened before.

And yes, El Al does do tremendous amounts of screening and checking before people get on the planes.

However, they also have significant machinery (procedurally) to handle anything that might go wrong once the plane is in the air. They know that it's not possible to have 100% security in advance. They recognize that even an El Al Pilot could be a terrorist, and have plans to deal with that.

As the head of El Al security has said before congress multiple times in the past 10 years, as long as the US continues to pay security screeners minimum wage salaries, and give them days/weeks of training instead of hours, they will perform minimum wage work, and no procedural/policy changes will enhance security. End of story.

Do Marshalls earn frequent flyer miles ? What a job !!

Well, as long as El Al has far more security than anyone else, I would agree. If every airline had as much security as El Al, then someone would have a reason figure out how to beat it. Right now, a hijacker really doesn't need to go through all that trouble. The fact that El Al is "safe" can just as well be because they aren't being targeted, since so many easier targets are readily available.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/....ap/index.html

An interesting article regarding El Al security....Some things the US might start thinking about doing....inconvenient or not, it does save lives....

Perhaps the most sobering part of Israeli security is the final part, the part that says that if all else has failed and the plane does get taken over, that it gets shot down immediately. I know we weren't ready to go to that extent before Tuesday, but I wonder how it looks to us now. I for one would want to feel really, really confident that all security measures taken prior to my flight taking off were well founded and effective, and not just politically correct.

Turn on CNN. John Ashcroft live just announced air marshalls on flights.

Yep, MSNBC just reported that the marshalls are plain clothed, armed, FBI agents.

Let me tell you something about weapons: every passenger has two of the most deadly weapons with himself or herself every time they board a plane, being their two hands.
Trained and conditioned, the hand is a swift and silent killer; the index finger can stun,
immobilize, or kill; the heel can break or kill; the thumb can do all these and more.
Almost anything can become a weapon when used
as one.

Marshals are one darn good idea as are the
others from Professor Moriarty.