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  • From: David Minton <dminton AT mindspring.com>
  • To: InterNetWorkers <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Stopping terrorism
  • Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 14:08:08 -0400


About the best we can do is putting armed federal agents on all flights.

There is discussion about locking the cockpit doors before take off, and not
opening it until landing. Some claim that would have prevented Tuesday's
disasters, but we know it would not. Unless the crew was ordered not to open
the door, even if a passenger was threatening to kill people, which was
probably the case. They may even have killed a few people to make their
point that they were serious.

Planes could be designed so the crew could only enter the plan from the
outside, and not through the cabin. The cockpit then need to be on a
separate air supply to prevent a gas agent from being used in the cabin to
overcome the crew.

How determined are the terrorists? Could they get one of their own hired as
a pilot by an airline? If the cockpit is sealed, the terrorist pilot could
overpower the rest of the crew and crash the plane.

Remember, we are only looking at passenger airlines. There are cargo
aircraft and general aviation. There is no security in these areas.

David

On 9/14/01 1:48 PM, "Michael S Czeiszperger" <czei AT webperformanceinc.com>
wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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> On Friday 14 September 2001 01:35 pm, you wrote:
>> Think about the new security rules being put into effect at the nation's
>> airports. They will end convenient air travel as we know it, and I doubt
>> will make a single difference.
>
> I think you're right. Preventing weapons only makes it marginally harder for
> anyone wanting to hijack the plane. The main differences between types of
> weapons are the physicological fear their produce and the killing
> efficiency;
> its considerably easier to kill someone with a gun than with a knife, for
> example. Rationally we know that a terrorist could kill someone with their
> bare hands, but it loses the scare factor-- the sight of a terrorist holding
> a passenger and threatening to kill them with bare hands is less threatening
> that the same terrorist holding a sharp looking kife at the throat.
>
> In the end any security measures that don't physically make it impossible
> for
> anyone from the cabin to get into the cockpit won't work. Any 3 or 4 guys
> trained in hand to hand combat could overpower the stewards and physically
> drag the pilots out of the cockpit without any weapons.
>
> - --
> Michael S Czeiszperger
> czei AT webperformanceinc.com
>
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> ---
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