• What's ticked?
• Accolades
• Contact us

c o l u m n s

• Cheap Charlie
• ChrisCrossings
• Err Travel
• Leocha
• Travel Notes
• Archives

s u b s c r i b e

• Elliott's E-Mail, a free weekly newsletter, is your insider resource for moneysaving ideas.

First name

Last name

E-mail address

Subscribe
Cancel

• Like what you see? Now you can become an underwriter.

a l s o

• Ticked e-mail
• Visit Tripso
• Referring sites
• Home

s e a r c h

• Find a story.



(c) Elliott Publishing.

Age of Hijacking Ends
Cheap Charlie · October 22 , 2001

Hijacking is dead.

OK, I'll say it. The age of airline hijackings is over.

You'd never know it by the way the security personnel are laying their hands on our bodies, unbuckling our belts, rolling our shoes through the x-ray machines, taking away our nail-clippers.

We are being treated as a nation of criminals when we did nothing wrong. In fact, the passenger screeners at Boston and Newark never did anything wrong. The system worked. But our security was organized to prevent the last hijacking that took place over 20 years ago. This was different.

Even this never-before-considered threat of having a plane used as a giant kamikaze bomb just doesn't exist any more.

Pilots will stay, locked in their cockpit and land the plane at the first sign of trouble. Marshals will sit randomly on planes. And most-importantly, passengers will no longer sit pacifically while a madman commandeers a flight.

Sorry. We are beefing up security to protect us from a threat that will not come again. We've been there. Someone might get hurt or killed, but never again will an airplane be used as a suicide bomb. Those days are done.

This fact also means that the normal run-of-the-mill hijacker is now out of luck. No passengers or pilots are going to sit around and let him or her land the plane and negotiate with a crisis team on the Tarmac. Forgetaboutit.

Ironically, the horrible tragedy of the World Trade Center ended the age of hijackings. We need to prepare for something new. We need to free our fliers and let them go back to shuffling about the terminals and filing onto airplanes peacefully.

In fact, just take away all the metal detectors and x-ray machines. I don't think there are many hijackers who will chance a plane takeover when there may be a dozen of other passengers with weapons available.

I have spoken with law enforcement folk and other passengers and realize that the metal-detecting/x-ray machines will stay. Another suggestion is to have police, FBI agents and other federal and state agents who are trained with firearms and licensed to carry arms be encouraged to fly with their weapons. It will be like a built-in air marshal unit.

We need to encourage our representatives to mandate the purchase and immediate installation of effective explosive detection machines for carryon and checked luggage. I know that there are many safeguards in place, but this is where our focus should be rather than on nail clippers.


Charlie Leocha is the Boston-based author of Travel Rights: Know the Rules of the Road and the Air Before You Go. Cheap Charlie appears every Monday on this site. E-mail him at leocha@aol.com or access his Web site.