Never again

Flight Journal, Feb 2002 by Gillcrist, Paul

TAILVIEW Some smoke still rises in downtown New York at the site of the World Trade Center catastrophe. And, as before in the wake of hijackings, I have wrestled with the problem of providing a modicum of security for air travelers.

My ruminations always come back to some very important basic truths. There are still many areas where improvements can be made in airport security: access, inspections, the presence of alert police forces, SWAT teams, bomb-sniffing dogs, roving police patrols on the tarmac and surveillance for and the scooping up of suspicious, unguarded, or abandoned luggage or packages.

But, having acknowledged all of these diverse steps, the final most important safety features are still the pilot, the first officer and the dedicated flight attendants.

Not only must the two people in the cockpit be protected (that is relatively easy to do procedurally and physically), but more important, they must be empowered to prevent and combat the threat of a hijacking. Of course, passenger safety should always be paramount. Nevertheless, when those two airliners were closing on New York for their final dives into the World Trade Center towers, I'm sure their passengers would have been more than happy to concede to the flight crew a wide range of extreme options.

Having the ability to depressurize the main cabin, turn out all lights, turn off all oxygen supplies, actuate impenetrable barriers to the cockpit, conduct extreme negative G maneuvers, lock all escape hatches and even spray some disabling chemical such as mace into the main cabin, might be extremely useful to a captain threatened with a hijacking. Would these acts jeopardize passenger safety? Of course they would. Would such extreme measures be accepted by passengers as an alternative to diving into the side of the World Trade towers? Of course they Would. Could airplane manufacturers design a flight control system that would, when actuated by an emergency, unoverrideable, switch, take over the flight of an airliner and automatically direct it to a final landing at the nearest suitable field, hands off? Of course they could.

In the 1970s, the U.S. Navy fielded something called the automatic carrier landing system (ACLS). I remember using it many times to land aboard an aircraft carrier, especially at night. When properly adjusted, the system put my Phantom right into the target wire every time. A Boeing design engineer has assured me that it would be relatively simple to put a similar system in any airliner. To be a credible deterrent, the system must be irrevocable so that no matter what the hijacker threatens to do, the pilot will not have the power to take back control of the airplane.

There is a good reason for the time-- honored tradition of a ship's captain being the ultimate authority at sea. So also does the captain of an airliner hold such responsibility, authority and accountability. The reason for this awesome responsibility and authority, as compared to that of the engineer of a passenger train or a bus driver, is very simple. A ship at sea or an airliner airborne is in far greater danger than a Greyhound bus. The airline pilot can't simply pull over to the side of an airway, park and wait for a tow truck. Neither can the captain of a ship at sea. The slightest miscue by one of his crew can send the ship to the bottom with the loss of all hands. To the captain, the sea is an implacable enemy. The same should apply to the airline captain to whom gravity is the equally implacable enemy.

Therefore, it seems that the solution to the skyjacking problems the world faces today lies with the aircrew. They must be given the tools as well as the training to combat the threat of terrorism. It is much too early in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center and Pentagon tragedies to draw very many conclusions, but I am certain that if the captains of those airliners had the necessary tools at hand (as suggested above), these disasters might have been averted.

The thoughtful reader is probably shaking his head in wonder because this author has yet to address the real solution to the dilemma of aerial hijacking: that of holding accountable those countries who support international terrorism for the actions of terrorists who train in their countries and receive their actual support. An international policy of making those rogue countries pay for their misdeeds is the final answer. The price extracted must be so painful that those countries will be convinced that it is far better to stamp out terrorist training in their territory than to let them continue. There is no doubt in my mind that those rogue countries know exactly who the perpetrators are. There is also no doubt that somewhere in the state budget in those countries there is a thinly disguised line item that identifies the government funds allotted to their training expenses. These governments must be convinced beyond any doubt that terrorism doesn't pay. A world-- wide agreement by the industrial powers to freeze all assets of the rogue countries abroad would be marvelously effective as a first step.