Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: mart Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2001 5:09 AM Subject: Return to the the Wild, Wild West?? - Vigilante mobs urged to "defend" airliners!! Forward from mart. Please distribute widely. Return to the Wild, Wild West?? - Vigilante mobs urged to "defend" airliners!! This news item is so unbelievably stupid and bizarre, it almost defies comment. United Airlines is urging passengers to rise up and "vigorously defend the aircraft", in case of a hijacking, using blankets, food trays and whatever else may be available. A United Airlines pilot recently told passengers "If anybody stands up and is trying to take over the plane, stand up together, take whatever you have and throw it at their heads. You have to aim for their faces so they have to defend themselves.". Pity any non -white, Middle Eastern, Arabic or Muslim *looking* passenger who gets up from his seat to stretch his legs or go to the washroom. ================================================================= http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/21/gen.attacks.taking.charge.ap/ Passengers urged to defend planes September 21, 2001 Posted: 5:44 PM EDT (2144 GMT) (AP) -- Kathy Rockel was amazed when her United Airlines flight last weekend began with an extraordinary message from the pilot: He informed passengers how to rise up and fend off hijackers. "If anybody stands up and is trying to take over the plane, stand up together, take whatever you have and throw it at their heads," she quoted the pilot as saying. "You have to aim for their faces so they have to defend themselves." The pilot also said passengers could fight hijackers by throwing blankets over their heads, wrestling them to the ground and holding them until he landed, Rockel said. And referring to the "we the people" preamble to the Constitution, she recalled, he said, "We will not be defeated." "Everybody on the plane was applauding," said Rockel, a medical transcriptionist traveling from Denver to Washington, D.C., September 15 on United's Flight 564. "People had tears coming down their faces. It was as if we had a choice here, that if something were to happen we're not completely powerless." Peter Hannaford, a public relations consultant on the plane, wrote about the incident in a column published in The Washington Times. He described how the pilot urged passengers to use books, glasses, shoes and other instruments to attack hijackers. His message quickly spread via the Internet. United Airlines declined comment on the incident. Spokeswoman Liz said the airline had not changed its policy on what flight crews should say, adding that what this pilot did "is probably due to duress." The pilot's message, while unorthodox, is part of a growing feeling among some aviation safety experts in the wake of the terrorist attacks that travelers must be more aggressive in resisting hijackers. Some passengers on United Flight 93, one of four planes commandeered September 11, apparently rushed the hijackers and are believed to have helped prevent the aircraft from reaching Washington, D.C. The plane nose-dived in a Pennsylvania field -- the only one not to hit a target. The take-charge approach is a shift in decades-long attitudes by both pilots and passengers that cooperation is the best approach for dealing with hijackers. But that belief "was based on the fundamental premise that the hijackers are rational human beings and want to live," said Raleigh Truitt, a pilot who heads his own aviation consulting firm in New Jersey. "When you're on an airplane and it's controlled by people who are ... bent on destroying themselves and others," he said, "the reaction has to be different." John Mazor, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, said pilots are now considering the possibility of heading a public awareness campaign to emphasize that "safety is everybody's responsibility." "We're using the term `aggressively defend the airplane,"' Mazor said. "The danger is we don't want passengers to suddenly be forming posses every time somebody speaks with a foreign accent," he added. "There has to be some way of channeling this and making sure it's not unleashed except in cases of dire emergency." The union is leading a campaign to improve airline safety and one of the first priorities will be to get a stronger cockpit door, Mazor said. He also said pilots are rethinking their opposition to guns in the cockpit. "We can't limit ourselves to situations that used to work," he said. This discussion of new air safety techniques come as some pilots and flight crews returning to the skies are taking extra steps to reassure rattled travelers. Beth Rosen, a suburban Chicago passenger who flew from Paris to Cincinnati last weekend, said the Delta pilot kept his passengers apprised of every step he was taking -- even notifying them when he opened the cockpit door. "A couple of times he would say, 'Everything's going great. We're flying fine.' You felt like they were your buddies in the cockpit," she said. On the unusual trip to Washington last week, Rockel said, a flight attendant urged passengers to chat with one and show each other family photos. Hannaford said he thought the message from the pilot -- who thanked the passengers for being brave -- was terrific. "There was a palpable sense of relief," he said. "My wife and I said, 'What an amazing thing to say.'" Hannaford said he wrote a letter to United's chairman, praising the pilot. "What he said was short but sweet," he said. "This man ought to get a medal." ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://TOPICA.COM/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [email protected] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
