Quote:
Originally Posted by desertgrandma
Okay.......I have a question.
What is YOUR (anyone?) answer to keeping terrorists w/bombs or weapons off planes?
Maybe we could ask nicely.
"Please, if anyone has a bomb, could you please leave it in this container before boarding."
C'mon, give a solution.
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First of all, what I'm about to write is an idea that didn't came out originally from my mind, but I have always agreed that it would have been the best solution. Unfortunately (as you will see) it's a totally impopular idea and to put it in practice now means spending whole wagons of money to modify or substitute current airplanes (had it been implemented years ago, when airplanes were just a new transportation mean, it would have repayed itself tenfold by now).
Also, it's not perfect. Perfect solutions do not exist. But it would be a far better deterrent than the current solution.
The possible solution to airplane terrorism is: total isolation of the cabin from the passengers' seats.
By total isolation I mean: NO door connecting the cabin to the passengers' and crew's quarters, no intercom, no speakers, no NOTHING. Nada. Nix. When I started working, years ago, I learnt that history shows that no terrorist makes airplanes blow up "just because": airplanes are far better terror-inducers when they crash ONTO something (buildings, places, airports, etc) because such a crash would mean 3 to 10 times the number of victims. Much scarier than just the airplane's passengers.
Put a 3 inch steel wall between the cabin and the rest of the airplane, and allow no communication between the two compartments. Any terrorist would be unable to threaten the pilots, even if they were seriously going to kill people. Isolate/jam any radiofrequency coming from inside the passengers' compartment so that they can't communicate with the ground.
Any necessary communication from the passengers MUST pass through the control towers' communications, even if they need to tell the pilot to change route because of an emergency (passenger tells a hostess "my wife doesn't feel well", hostess calls the closest control tower, control tower then gives instruction to the pilot).
Should there be a terrorist threat, the control tower will tell NOTHING to the pilots, or at most make the pilots land in a nearby airport SAFELY so that they can surround the plane and arrest the terrorists. Also, no terrorist can point a gun to the pilot's head, nor can they take the pilot's place and pilot the plane by themselves.
Downsides: expect at least three cases in which the terrorists kill everyone (except the pilots, of course) before terrorists understand that it's useless to try and use airplanes for terrorism.
Where is it weak? As with all things, its weakness lies in the human part, the control towers' crew. Should a terrorist force a hostess to tell the control tower to communicate with the pilot and make him change course, the control tower should not do so, or at most
pretend that they did, until the plane lands. The problem is that they are human too, and might give in to the terrorist's demands. Even then, since the pilots are separated from the terrorists by the wall of steel, no pilot would ever make his plane crash onto a skyscraper even if he knew of a terrorist on the other side of the wall (which would mean multiply the number of certain deaths).