Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by dorfsmay on Sunday February 21, 2016 @10:07AM
(#11144755)
Old style hijack had become rare because police forces around the world made sure that you couldn't come out a winner, you typically get killed. Hijacker are at a disadvantage: limited resources, stuck in a small space easy to surround.
The fact that the 9/11 highjackers had planned to die as part of the hijack was a game changer.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by matwood on Sunday February 21, 2016 @10:52AM
(#11144932)
Exactly. A 9/11 style attack is also a single time event. Now that passengers know the outcome, they simply will not let it happen again. The only possible method would be to turn an existing pilot into a suicide killer.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by adrianN on Sunday February 21, 2016 @03:06PM
(#11146201)
The reinforced doors they introduced after 9/11 make this strategy particularly good. The passengers can't do anything if the pilot decides that he has a death wish.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by DuskStar on Sunday February 21, 2016 @10:13PM
(#11148179)
An example of such would be the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash from May 2015, where the copilot locked the cockpit door after the pilot left for a bathroom break and then flew into a mountain.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by matwood on Monday February 22, 2016 @09:17AM
(#11150886)
If the pilot has been compromised there is not much that can be done regardless of flight door strength.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by jsprogrammer on Sunday February 21, 2016 @03:09PM
(#11146220)
Crashing highjacked planes was a known scenario. In fact, FOX broadcast a fictionalized scenario where a commercial airliner was highjacked and set on a crash course with the WTC about six months before 9/11/01.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by xbmcuser on Sunday February 21, 2016 @08:40PM
(#11147779)
Tom Clancy's wrote a fictional book about lone mentally disturbed Japanese pilot flying a plane into the pentagon. I read it that book maybe a few weeks before 9/11. Was shocked that the US intelligence didnt see something like this happening when a fiction author did.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by s_q_b on Monday February 22, 2016 @07:08PM
(#11155406)
Trying to recall the name, but I believe it was a decapitation strike on the Capitol during the State of the Union.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by dragonwriter on Monday February 22, 2016 @07:22PM
(#11155464)
Debt of Honor.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by mirimir on Sunday February 21, 2016 @04:26PM
(#11146621)
That needs a link.
I find http://911blogger.com/news/2013-05-16/hollywood-and-911-movi... but nothing there about anything broadcast on Fox.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by jsprogrammer on Sunday February 21, 2016 @04:56PM
(#11146785)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen_(TV_series)#...
First episode: https://youtu.be/EjbQ-BDh4PU
Edit: the author of your link addresses the episode in the comments section, "The Lone Gunmen Pilot Episode", and says that the article you linked was only focused on things "in production" when the attack occurred.
Re:Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
by DrScump on Sunday February 21, 2016 @09:48PM
(#11148101)
Wow, I had forgotten that series (X-Files spinoff).
Vince Gilligan was an Executive Producer.
The actor playing the father, George Coe, was one of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players on SNL, then later played Ben Cheviot on "Max Headroom".
So the NSA might have known these people were learning to fly and maybe even preparing a hijack, but until 9/11 this was not dramatic -- if and when the hijack happened, they would have been expected to fly to Cuba or something and then dealt with. Pre-9/11, airplane hijacks had become rare since their '80s and '70s heydays, maybe there was some complacency (as in "yeah these guys will never manage it, and even if they do, we'll likely get most passengers back safely anyway, let them play"). Or at least that's what a sharp Occam's razor would suggest.