Aircraft Hijacking - Dealing With Hijackings

Dealing With Hijackings

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. 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 has no longer been used.

Since the attacks, the situation for crew members, passengers and hijackers has changed. United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field as flight attendants and passengers—who had heard about the other three hijacked planes ramming into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—fought hijackers who were likely flying to crash the plane either into the White House or the United States Capitol. As on Flight 93, crew members and passengers now have to calculate the risks of passive cooperation, not only for themselves but also for those on the ground. Future suicide hijackers most likely will encounter greater resistance from passengers and flight crews, making another successful hijacking more unlikely. An example of active passenger and crew member resistance occurred when passengers and flight attendants of American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami on December 22, 2001, teamed up to help helped prevent Richard Reid from igniting explosives hidden in his shoes. Another example is when a few passengers and flight attendants teamed up to subdue Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who attempted to detonate explosives sewn into his underwear aboard Northwest Flight 253 on December 25, 2009. Flight attendants and pilots now receive extensive anti-hijacking and self-defense training designed to thwart a hijacking or bombing.