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Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

The original 9/11 attack showed how simple traditional weapons could be used to leverage using four whole airplanes as nontraditional weapons, three of them with devastating effect, all of them with lethal effect. I think Schneier's point is correct that spending the same amount of money on intelligence, investigations, and emergency response would keep us safer than screening what innocent passengers bring on to airplanes, but current procedures for airport security are still a reaction to 9/11 as it happened then. I look forward to the day when we dial back airport security procedures to the new reality of reinforced cockpit doors and passengers who will fight would-be hijackers to save their lives.

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> The original 9/11 attack showed how simple traditional weapons could be used to leverage using four whole airplanes as nontraditional weapons, three of them with devastating effect, all of them with lethal effect.

Right, but the GP's point is that it was only possible to do that _once_, because the success of the 9/11 attacks depended on the passengers cooperating with the hijackers. That was a reasonable assumption because for the previous 30 years, "in the event of a hijacking just cooperate until we can negotiate your release" was the standard advice. Now it isn't.

Even in 9/11, 25% of the passengers figured out on their own that they shouldn't cede the cockpit. Today the figure would be 100%, plus the cockpit is sealed off for the duration of the flight anyway. So I really don't see a scenario where box-cutters would take out the whole plane any more.

I have heard many people express this sentiment - our own attitude has changed since the tragedy, and thus we would never let a small group of people muscle their way to the cockpit as they did then.

That said, whenever I read accounts of the actual attack [1] they seem well planned - several "muscle men" clearing the way, using pepper sprays, etc. That is, it is not obvious to me that a group of people would be able to overcome that level of coordination and brute force. What piece am I missing?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks#Events

Thanks for pointing that out, I was unaware there was much tactical skill in the attacks. Every news piece I'd seen on the hijackers concentrated mostly on their mistakes leading up to the attacks and how even a marginally competent counter-intelligence effort would have caught them...

More to your point though, I don't think the passengers would have to actually overcome the hijackers, just bottle them up. Whatever they're _not_ good at, surprised scared uncoordinated groups of strangers are pretty good at getting in the way. And there's still the fact that the cockpit door is locked.

Remember, one plane did. After hearing about what happened to the other three planes, the passengers realized what was going on, and (almost) took back the plane. This was all on the spur of the moment, yet they rose to the occasion. If they had known what was going on slightly earlier than they did, they could have stopped the terrorists getting into the cockpit in the first place, and then they would have saved their plane as well.

Exactly, that fourth plane already proved the case, no idea why we're even having this debate. No plane will ever be successfully hijacked in the US again (or at least not for many generations), even if the hijackers have guns, because everyone now knows the plan is to crash it into something. The entire passenger compartment will bum rush the hijackers. Plus, armed Air Marshals.

The only thing the 4th plane proved was that the murder of an entire airliner is possible with ordinary weapons.

Except, with reinforced cockpit doors, I'm not sure that a hijacking with those types of weapons would result in a crash now.

The plane only went down b/c the terrorists had taken the cockpit. They crashed it intentionally when they realized the passengers were about to retake it. With barricaded, reinforced cockpits that won't happen again, and passengers will also fight back instantly, won't give hijackers time to get control and get organized.

The passengers of the fourth plane knew that other planes had been hijacked and crashed that same day. They made the assumption that these multiple hijackings in such a short period of time were all related and concluded that their plane would likely crash.

The probability that a random hijacking would be done with the intent of crashing the plane is far lower in general than on a day where you know another 3 hijackings did result in that. Especially when you consider how unlikely simultaneous hijackings are.

That plane had the smallest crew of hijackers, perhaps because one member of the hijacking plot was then under arrest in Minnesota.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacarias_Moussaoui#Capture

That the arrest was not followed up by a FISA court order allowing more investigation of the plans of the arrested person was a major screw-up on the part of the FBI.

Haven't all cockpits now become much more secure? I'm no expert, but it's my understanding that the pilots can seal themselves inside. Anyone trying to get into the cockpit would become a sitting duck, even if they were ruthlessly executing passengers with their simple weapons, 50+ people (likely including an air marshall or at least a strong, fit, high level athlete) should be able to overcome the hijackers. Post-9/11, I doubt many people take the "I hope they don't turn the plane into a missile" route.

Short of getting several automatic weapons on the plane or some kind of chemical weapon that can kill or incapacitate everyone on board, pilots being able to seal themselves off, coupled with internet and cell phone access getting better seems like it would make a repeat 9/11 extraordinarily difficult.

Cockpit doors are basically impossible to brute force / open / unlock now without the cooperation of the pilots.

I recall hearing about an airplane crash post-9/11. The airport fire department attempted to breach the door to reach a seriously injured pilot.

It took them forty minutes to reach the pilot. They first tried to breach the door and ended up forced to cut through the roof to get to him.

If the pilot doesn't want the door open, the door won't be opened. And I'd imagine that pilots are well-trained to never open the door in a hijacking. That said, if the hijacking gets nasty... maybe...

E: found it - it was the Turkish 1951 crash.

Also, the pilots have at least a fire axe on hand, and possibly also a gun, which they can easily use on anyone who forces the cockpit door.

And, they will be highly motivated to so defend themselves and the cockpit.

9/11 was different. People cooperated because that was protocol at the time for a plane hijacking. Nobody expected them to use the plane as a weapon with no regard to their own lives. This was an unprecedented attack.

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

"Before the September 11, 2001 attacks, most hijackings involved the plane landing at a certain destination, followed by the hijackers making negotiable demands. Pilots and flight attendants were trained to adopt the "Common Strategy" tactic, which was approved by the FAA. It taught crew members to comply with the hijackers' demands, get the plane to land safely and then let the security forces handle the situation. Crew members advised passengers to sit quietly in order to increase their chances of survival. They were also trained not to make any 'heroic' moves that could endanger themselves or other people. The FAA realized that the longer a hijacking persisted, the more likely it would end peacefully with the hijackers reaching their goal.[12] The September 11 attacks presented an unprecedented threat because it involved suicide hijackers who could fly an aircraft and use it to delibrately crash the airplane into buildings for the sole purpose to cause massive casualties with no warning, no demands or negotiations, and no regard for human life. The "Common Strategy" approach was not designed to handle suicide hijackings, and the hijackers were able to exploit a weakness in the civil aviation security system. Since then, the "Common Strategy" policy in the USA and the rest of the world to deal with airplane hijackings has no longer been used."

There was also a change in protocol after the Columbine High School massacre. In that attack the two were able to shoot victims while the police were outside setting up a perimeter. Now as a direct result of that attack police actively charge an active shooter, this is called Immediate Action Rapid Deployment. This is said to have saved dozens of lives in Virgina Tech alone.

Remember that half of 9/11/2001 was different. By 10:03AM, the solution was designed/implemented/successfully tested.

well, 25% really.

I was thinking roughly in terms of hours in the day, but yes.

> Nobody expected

But the gov't did.

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

I followed the Yousef trial and only heard about the blowing up airliners over the ocean part. I've never found a reference pre-9/11 about crashing them and believe these details were filled-in only afterwards.

No doubt keeping everyone else in the dark helped keep us safer. /s

This article indicates the crashing part of the plan was first mentioned in the media in June 1995:

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a060395ciahea...

“Then the ultimate assault on the so-called ‘infidels’: a plane flown by a suicide bomber was to nose-dive and crash into the American headquarters of the CIA, creating carnage.”

In any case, you really believe that the government talking more about Bojinka would have prevented 9/11?

The only reference is the Australian Advertiser in 1995. It is followed by this:

"While this first mention may be obscure from a United States point of view, the Bojinka planes as weapons plot will be mentioned in other media outlets in the years to come."

And a claim by the CNN correspondent that "We've done stories on it..."

All without citations to back up those claims. Every other reference to this detail at historycommons and everywhere I looked 11 years ago is post-9/11.

Here's what Bush said: "Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale."

Notice the "massive" out there. They could envision 10 airliners being blown up over the Pacific, but... Condi couldn't even foresee:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile..."

So apprently they were as ignorant as I was?

These groups were already well known to return to old methods (Bojinka itself was inspired by a mid-air bomb planted on a Tokyo flight earlier in the 90s, planned by KSM himself). My view, if your not going to do anything to mitigate against these techniques, the least you could do is publically warn us, IMO.

A few black kids beat a few white folks, a blond disappears from a cruise ship, and it's non-stop news coverage. Maybe folks would think a little bit after hearing more about Bojinka and a congressman or the FAA would wonder about cockpit intrusion and hijack policies. At least no one would be able to say "nobody could have foreseen"

Good points I guess, I just have a hard time believing publicizing these claims more would have had much of an effect on policy. I'll just point out the irony of your username and leave it at that :)

"Nobody expected them to use the plane as a weapon"

Nobody ... except for Tom Clancy and every single person who read _Debt of Honor_, wherein a plane is used as a suicide weapon flown into the US capital building.

> Nobody ... except for Tom Clancy and every single person who read _Debt of Honor_, wherein a plane is used as a suicide weapon flown into the US capital building.

Which is almost how Samuel Byck planned to assassinate Richard Nixon. The difference is that Byck planned to fly into the White House. (No, they're not the same building. Many people are confused on this point.)

He utterly failed in his attempt to hijack the airliner (hint: don't attempt a hijacking while the plane is still on the ground unless you know how to get a plane airborne), however, and Byck killed himself before the police got to him.

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

Anyway, movie-plot threats only very rarely come to pass. There are thousands of potential threats of this nature for every attempt, and the ratio of attempts to successful attempts is probably fairly high as well. It isn't worthwhile to try to protect against these kinds of threats.

https://www.schneier.com/essay-087.html

And that's what reinforced cockpit doors are for; if you can't gain access to the pilots then you can't hijack the plane. If you can't hijack the plane, then you can't turn it into a missile. Everything else is just a waste if you're just concerned with preventing the plane from becoming a missile.

You have a major flaw in your logic.

There are 3 actors:

S -- the security apparatus, the TSA, airlines, the state, the laws and rules they create, air marshals, NSA etc.).

A -- attackers

E -- everyone else, regular passengers

The flaw is that E is stupid, static, unable to learn form the past, need to be constantly protected by S.

A is smart, flexible, able to adapt and learn from mistakes ("ha we took X planes down, now we learned and we'll take X*5 planes down!").

S is also responsible, smart, it needs to act as a parent protecting and handling E. It also learns from the past, and if necessary it might impose arbitrary restrictions on E (security checks, black lists) in order to protect them from A.

You see the problem? Don't feel bad that is a very common mistake to make. Many people and the official reaction from S also follows the same logic (maybe you just internalized their PR?).

In fact not only did E learn better and was more effective, it has a track record to prove it. It immediately adapted (within hours!) and made sure to bring the plane down in a rural PA area not in NYC. TSA on the other hand, after years, billions of dollars and millions of man hours wasted still has not caught one single terrorist red-handed with a bomb ready to go off. (Granted other agencies from S foiled some plots). E has also been busy, they stopped Reid (the shoe bomber, if I am not mistaken).

Anyway, hopefully you see where I am going with this.

> I look forward to the day when we dial back airport security procedures to the new reality of reinforced cockpit doors and passengers who will fight would-be hijackers to save their lives.

I think this has already happened. I have TSA Pre✓ now, and the security procedure is as follows: plunk your bag down on the X-ray, walk through a metal detector, reclaim your bag. No taking liquids out. No taking your laptop out. Shoes, belt, and coat stay on.

The future (past?) is here :)

Your friends still can't wait with you at the gate

Ah, that was a 9/11 thing?

Yep.

The 9/11 tactic was no longer effect on 9/11, when the passengers of one of the flights heard that such things happened and took down the plane rather than allow it to be used as a weapon.

The only reason the attack worked was because previous hijackings were for ransom, and would be entirely ineffective in the modern climate, where citizens would take it as intent to use the plane as a weapon.

>>The original 9/11 attack showed how simple traditional weapons could be used to leverage using four whole airplanes as nontraditional weapons, three of them with devastating effect, all of them with lethal effect.

For the record, I think this is complete rubbish and USgov isn't being truthful about what/how 9/11 happened. I can't believe a plane full of people were too scared to fight people with box-cutters[1].

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLvkftuCFlI&t=1m55s

People weren't scared to fight people with box cutters, they just had no idea what was happening. The traditional model of airplane hijackings until that date was a hijacking followed by a safe landing and hostage exchange. The smart thing to do, given previous patterns, was to sit quietly and obey instructions.

If you've noticed, people are now much more wary of potential hijacking, to the point where a person who charged the cockpit door was beaten to death by passengers.

Even cockpit doors are going overboard. The 9-11 attacks were about attacking buildings with flammable liquids. A gasoline tanker and a small bomb would have killed 10× more people and been cheaper.

A gasoline tanker and bomb would make a fire. As with any other vehicles on the road, they crash and catch fire on a regular basis without taking down sky scrapers.

Hollywood representations of what gas tanks do when ruptured are inaccurate.

The WTC fell from fire weakening the steel frame.

Yes, from a plane, which first made massive holes in the structure, followed up by the fuel from an airline that carries more than one tanker truck worth of fuel being deposited into the center of the building.

A small leak on the side of a highway is different than the entire tank being ripped open in the lobby.

Good luck getting a tanker truck into a modern skyscraper's lobby. They've all got anti-truck posts concreted in around the perimeter to prevent just that.

Getting a gasoline tanker close enough to cause sufficient damage (i.e.: inside) would be hard; not only does it have to get close, it has to get inside. WTC famously had "10,000 pound planters" positioned around the buildings to stop vehicles from getting too close, and IIRC rather aggressive security preventing unwanted vehicles entering; they learned from the garage bombing about a decade before (just didn't extend vertically). Hijacking a just-took-off airliner was the most efficient & surprising way to transport & insert the liquids.

Cockpit doors are a cheap sensible solution. 10,000 pound planters worked until somebody figured out how to go over them.

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