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Journal SPAM: Do You Still Believe the Boxcutter Fairytale? 22

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

This guy had guns.

A fast-thinking pilot, with the help of passengers, fooled a gunman who had hijacked a jetliner flying from Africa to the Canary Islands, braking hard upon landing then quickly accelerating to knock the man down so travellers could pounce on him, Spanish officials said Friday.

Why wouldn't a Flight 93 pilot just fly a loop, and dump a blade-wielding bad man back near the loos?

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Do You Still Believe the Boxcutter Fairytale? More

Do You Still Believe the Boxcutter Fairytale?

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  • back then the rules were that you accommodated hijackers. And then the hijackers controlled the cockpit before the passengers rushed them, so they say.
    Or do you think there was only one hijacker, and the pilot already knew all bets were off?
  • Why wouldn't a Flight 93 pilot just fly a loop, and dump a blade-wielding bad man back near the loos?

    Airliners are very streamlined and efficient aircraft. They are designed to fly straight and level at high altitudes, at efficient airspeeds, for as long as possible. To make them as efficient as possible, they do not have the maneuverability of many other planes. They could certainly put the plane in a steep climb, but it would be a very short maneuver since it bring them perilously close to a stall.

    • Loops can be performed at a constant 1 gee, in which case they aren't perfectly round. An airliner could perform a loop without any trouble at all, with a skilled pilot.

      The problem is that an airliner isn't usually flown by someone who has practiced that particular move in an airliner.

      Airliners also have quite an excess of power, and wouldn't stall in a steep climb. A stall wouldn't be any big deal anyway, airliners stall quite nicely. They are purposely built with docile handling characteristics.
      • Loops can be performed at a constant 1 gee, in which case they aren't perfectly round. An airliner could perform a loop without any trouble at all, with a skilled pilot.

        I think you might be confusing a barrel roll with a loop. A barrel roll can be done at a constant 1g, and in fact there's a famous routine done by Bob Hoover in which he pours a cup of tea whilst perfroming a barrel roll. There is also a legend that a Delta 727 performed a barrel roll while on a red-eye flight whilst the passnegers slept

        • I'm an airplane geek. I'm not confusing a barrel roll with a loop, you can be sure.

          A loop *can* be done as a one gee maneuver, and as I said it won't be a round loop. Round loops are variable gee maneuvers. The only place where the non-round loop won't be really 1 gee will be at the bottom, but you can make that part pretty gentle if you can dirty the plane up.

          As far as stall characteristics go, you're plain wrong. A lot of factors go into stall characteristics, and wing sweep is just ONE factor. Another fa
          • BTW.

            When you flew BOAC - and later British - you got a LOT of Scottish pilots, ex-RAF. I'm not sure about how they derived the style, but every time I was greeted aboard by "Captain Howie" on the intercom, I knew that we were in for one of those nearly perpedicular landings - with a great THUMP of wheels...
        • ...a famous routine done by Bob Hoover...

          Oh jeeze [slashdot.org]. That's what I get for not reading ahead. Just happened to be the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw that.

          There is also a legend that a Delta 727 performed a barrel roll while on a red-eye flight whilst the passnegers slept.

          So that's what the story of the test pilot who rolled a 707 turned into! Life is a big game of telephone.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gx5000 ( 863863 )
      Anyone for a roll ?
      That would have worked even better.
      Cheers !
    • Heh. I was in a 747 on a return flight from Sydney to San Francisco. While we were about 200 feet off of the ground on the approach, the pilot banked steeply to the left and throttled up to full power into a fairly steep climb. It had many of the passengers concerned, and if anyone had been standing they certainly would have been in the back of the cabin. With no word from the pilot, we flew out over the ocean (I looked out of the window to see that we were not dumping fuel...). Finally the pilot gets
      • Anyone who's flown regularly to Burbank has experienced this. The Southwest pilots - good knows why - often break-off for a second approach. This is often just shy of touching down.

        They turn a 737-800 into a "vomit comet"
      • The big difference is landing vs taking off. These numbers are off the top of my head, but a fully loaded 747-400, the newset one, has a gross takeoff weight of 800,000lbs, of which ~360,000 is fuel! By the time your plane reached SF it was considerably lighter, which means that climbing like that can be done at a steeper angle. If it was fully loaded, than the semi on ice would probably be a more apt description.

        What is amazing about arcraft like that is in order to take-off, a 747 needs to accelerate

    • I exagerate when I say "loop".

    • I betcha Bob Hoover could pull it off (deadstick even!). Except it would be so smooth that if the window shades were closed the passengers would hardly notice, and end it with a perfect touchdown on the numbers.
  • I don't think that the Flight 93 pilots should've attempted a loop or roll, and I grant that it may be possible that the hijackers used boxcutters, but I don't believe (more than 50%) any of the explanations of who the hijackers were, who hired them, and whose plans they represented.

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