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Comment by exelius | Hacker News Reader

Hijacking airplanes after 9/11 is much more risky. Until 9/11, there was never a plot that involved intentionally hijacking an airliner with the intent of using it as a weapon and killing everyone on board. The assumption was "Oh, if we just give them what they want they'll let us all live."

Post-9/11, if anyone tries to hijack an airplane they're going to have every able-bodied male between the ages of 18 and 40 come at them with the expectation that they're fighting for their life. I know I personally would take my chances that they don't have a bomb: if I do nothing, I would assume I am definitely going to die. If I do something, the passengers collectively could overpower them and hope were bluffing about the bomb. If they weren't, it's the same outcome as doing nothing.

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>Until 9/11, there was never a plot that involved intentionally hijacking an airliner with the intent of using it as a weapon and killing everyone on board.

Fedex Flight 705 (7 April 1994), before 9/11. Pilot tried to kill other pilots so he could crash plane into FedEx hub and destroy it and employees. Was subdued, barely, by a pilot with cracked skull that then managed to land the plane.

Egypt Air 990 (31 October 1999), before 9/11. Pilot deliberately killed everyone on board, thought it wasn't a weapon.

True, but not necessarily decisive. If you're the pilot, or someone else with a way past that new-and-improved post-9/11 cockpit door, you can likely make it work for you. Or if you have some way of getting an automatic weapon or some other useful tool on board (far from easy of course!) you can still hold off large numbers of desperate, but unarmed, passengers.

Didn't the pilot have a penchant for allowing attractive young girls into the cockpit? That's was front page news here in the UK.

Assuming the hijackers weren't already in the cockpit. It seems to me that the most likely people taking control of the plane in the situation stipulated were the people already in control of the plane when it left the ground.

The majority of hijackings have the original pilot at the controls under duress. In 9/11, it was unusual that the hijackers had done flight training and piloted the planes. That was because the pilots wouldn't have done what those hijackers wanted.

Also after 9/11 every plane would be just blown away from the interceptors.

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