Good evening and welcome aboard flight 123. Once we reach our crusing altitude, we will begin our dinner service which, in compliance with new FAA directives, will be served only with paper straws. Tonight, we are featuring beef broth, very mashed potatos, creamed corn, and pudding!
Seriously, though, the passengers on the first three flights must have assumed that this was a "routine" hijacking and, that if they just cooperated they would all get an unplanned, but all-expenses paid, trip to Cuba. With the threat of a bomb and not knowing the full nature of this hijacking, one can understand this.
I would willingly attack someone who threatened me with a box cutter. But, if that person claimed to have a bomb and was, thus, also threatening the lives of everyone else on the plane plus those who might be killed on the ground if the plane crashed, and if I believed that by simply cooperating quietly, the situation could ultimately be resolved, I would refrain.
On the fourth plane, however, the passengers had heard the terrible news of the other hijackings and they choose not to cooperate. Cell phone conversations from that plane indicate that those passengers made a simple but heroic decision: they would die before they would allow their plane to become a weapon.
Greater love hath no man but that he should lay down his life for another (John 15:13).
These terrorists have changed the nature of hijacking. In the past, we've always assumed that the hijackers wanted to survive the episode and that by cooperating we could all survive together. Passengers must, from now on, assume that hijackers are suicidal. In any struggle aboard an aircraft in flight there is the risk that control may be lost, the plane may crash, and everyone aboard may die. In such a situation, there is the very real risk that the terrorists do have a bomb, that they will blow up the plane, and that all aboard may die. As terrible and frightening as those risks may be, they must be accepted in light of the much greater risk that the terrorists may use the plane to kill many more in addition to all of the passengers aboard.
If anything good does come out of this it might be this: we may have seen our last successful air hijacking. In the future, passengers and crew will not stand by assuming that, if they cooperate, this will all end peacefully.
