But on Wednesday evening Donald Trump told reporters the incident remained unclear, after he had spoken to Netanyahu. “It seems as though the co-pilot was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack-job, and he stabbed the pilot,” the US president told reporters in the Oval Office.
Beats the mumblings of everyone else as an encapsulation.
In what have been hailed as acts of tremendous bravery, several passenger rushed the cockpit of the flight and wrestled the controls from the alleged attacker even as the plane descended sharply, managing to eventually taking control and stabilising the plane before making an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
And, well, you know? Agreed, it’s not cowardice:
A video shared by the prime minister’s office showed passenger Yaniv Hayoun, a plumber, speaking to Netanyahu at length about how the events on board played out.
Hayoun told the prime minister how he and other passengers heard screaming and felt the air pressure change as the plane dived before they forced their way into the cockpit and found the attacker at the instrument panel.
“I grabbed the attacker, put him in a chokehold, and dragged him out first,” Hayoun said during the meeting with Netanyahu after the plane had landed safely and the passengers were flown to Israel.
As others wrestled with the attacker, Hayoun said he grabbed the controls and pulled them the way he had seen on television. Then other crew members took over.
Yet the lesson has, I think, been learned. Those who sat in their seats for fear of something worse all died anyway on 9/11. Therefore folk don’t sit in their seats anymore. Or at least, enough don’t.
And as a personal thing, given history, the one group of people I’d not expect to simply await, passively, their fate is Israeli Jews. Learnt that lesson, fight back anyway.
I thought that one of the security changes after 9/11 was to make it almost impossible to break into the locked cockpit …
The pilot hit the door release. Good job too, otherwise…
Maybe better to have access to the cockpit than not?
I knew a long haul pilot whose pastime when he was away was whittling and he was very good at it. His problem was that over zealous, in his opinion, security would often confiscate his knife and he would never get it back. They were expensive and it was costing him a lot of money so he worked out a way to smuggle them on board.
Perhaps the security people weren’t be over zealous.
There’s usually an axe in the cockpit so the crew can chop themselves out if necessary. Possibly the nutter used that. We’ll know soon enough.
9/11 buggered up the hijacking game. You’re not going to get 3 days sat on an airport with publicity for your cause.
Everyone saw what happened to United 93. The plane was fortunately late, so soon after the terrorists got hold of it, everyone with phones knew what was happening in New York.
They didn’t sit in their seats on the fourth plane and they still died. What saved these people was the presence on the aircraft of two relief pilots. Otherwise, they’d have died too.
As Robert Stack said in Airplane!
“It’s just like riding a bike, except it’s harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.”
They nearly did anyway. It almost went supersonic in the dive and lost part of its rudder in the process. The relief pilots were fortunate in pulling out without so severely overstressing the airframe it disintegrated. That aircraft is fucked. It’s unlikely to fly again.
I don’t think anyone involved will ever complain about aircraft engineers over-engineering their designs. A lesson for the bean counters at Boeing, not that they’ll take it.
It was a much-maligned 737max.
I’m 100% sure that one of the things that people like most about Trump is that he speaks plainly.
“As others wrestled with the attacker, Hayoun said he grabbed the controls and pulled them the way he had seen on television. ”
Not, presumably, on ‘Top Gun’
Don’t they all have an autopilot, like on ‘Airplane’?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QZWnV3HVZqI?feature=share
“before they forced their way into the cockpit” seems to be over-egging the pudding.
The pilot, an Indian chap, had managed to work the latch so that they could open the door.
Anyhoo the villain was an Omani. Beware of Omaniphobia or Labour will throw you in jail.
Next year they will have Israeli pilots on all Israeli planes.
I can remember about 30 years ago all El Al flights requiring one to check in two hours before take-off thanks to higher security checks – a fair number of people chose to fly El Al instead of their national airline.
.
Someone said that if you take a plane full of Israelis you’re likely to have a tac-team on board, and someone trained as a pilot, a doctor, and 50/50 a really good lawyer or accountant;)
I remember flying Jordanian to Amman and the rather well built man in a suit and carrying a small briefcase in the next aisle, who kept walking up and down the aeroplane.