Chapter 14: Nine-Eleven.

Actually, the news here is playing that down quite a bit.  They barely mention Osama bin Laden. 

bin Laden's picture has been all over the news here.   I must say, whoever did it, it was an impressive performance.  It probably -is- his style.

They are focusing on interesting but not controversial things, like the buildings' strength and whether or not they needed extra bombs on board the plane or in the building.  (As someone who actually has fueled a 727, I can tell you they didn't.) 

Yes I heard that silly suggestion too.  To make a difference they would need about a ton of explosive smuggled on board.  I can just imagine "Did you pack your truck yourself sir?  Has anyone else had access to it?"   Why do they think all the flights they hijacked were transcontinental flights?  For the fuel load of course.

As to strength of buildings, I'd say the towers did what you would expect under the circumstances.  What is more worrying is fire control.  It was the fire that brought them down, not the impact.  If you drop half a dozen stories down by one floor in any building it will bring it down, you can't design for that.  However sprinklers are wonderful things in this sort of situation.  I guess they had a one-shot gas discharge system which is fine for a burning waste-paper basket, or any of the sort of normal internal hazards you might expect, but it can't cope with a military attack.

Very few things in the U.S. of A. are built to do so.  We are smug.

I haven't heard of any Arab-Americans being harassed yet; maybe they're just staying inside because they are not stupid.

Heck, I know that.  When Midway was in its infancy, the Aloha Air pilots would let me "fly" for a while, kind of like my dad letting me drive when I was six.  I sat in the pilot chair and held it steady.  They showed me how to make gentle turns, and I did it.  This was, of course, on a 727 when we had no passengers other than Midway employees on it, and over open ocean.  And they let us all try it.  But I am sure that I could do it, no problem.  Now landing... that's the hard part.  And the hijackers didn't worry about upsetting the passengers, or breaking FAA rules, or anything else.

The following are random thoughts, and don't make much sense.  Bear with me.

The continuing problem is cockpit access.  The doors have to be able to be kicked in as per FAA rules, in case of trouble. 

Yes, look at the locks we put on a few hundred in cash.  If the FAA designed safes they'd have to have quick-release locks in case anyone got locked in.

The other problems are, I think, silly rules, squeamishness and not enough knowledge.  I am trained in FAA regulations, as I used to be the person who searched people on Midway before they got on our plane. 

I bet guys came back for more! 

No.  I was distinctly humorless when I was doing that.

It is legal to bring a knife with up to a four-inch blade.  I have always thought that that is a stupid rule.  When I was training with the FAA, I asked about it, and they guy said, "Some people have pocket knives that are heirlooms."  Fine, pack it in your checked luggage or don't bring it, period.

I accidentally packed a 3" locknife from my toolkit in my handbaggage on a flight from Manchester to Dublin, the rest of the tools were in the hold after having been given a special X-Ray grilling.  It was impounded. They're kind of keen on that run, I wonder why.

No!  Does the IRA hijack things?

I have heard that the hijackers had boxcutters and plastic knives from concessions stands.  A boxcutter, in the U.S., is a metal or plastic knife with a triangular blade that slides out, about one inch long.    It can't actually do all that much damage, but I'm sure if they held it to someone's quivering eyeball the passengers were grossed out and scared out of their wits. Serrated plastic knives, applied with enough force, can cut you really nastily but can't stab you deeply.

A wound an inch deep and several inches long can be pretty distressing to most people, even if it is not medically significant, and as you say there are plenty of places where vital structures come within an inch of the surface if you know what you are doing and are in control.
There are plenty of engineering materials that will make a knife and won't show on x-ray or metal detector, glass for example.  (It might break. Oh, pity!  That's the victims problem. Get two.) Then there are other weapons, my first thought when I realised that the gun theory wouldn't stand up statistically (some would have been caught)  was that they had quietly garrotted the crew.  They didn't really need to intimidate if they didn't need the pilot's skills.
I reckon I could make a serviceable glass dagger, d'you think there might be a market for them?  Glass hypodermics too.  There's a real bitch trick, if you wanted a customer to get caught you could make his knife of lead crystal.  It is totally opaque to x-rays, but you can hardly tell the difference by looking.

You just need to *ping* it.  Ah, the sound of fine cutlery.

I also know that all the major airports have these very cool explosives-sniffing machines that work very well.  If someone held up a box on a plane in the U.S. and said it was a bomb, I would not believe him, and would be more likely to do something desperate.  

There is always the inside job, if they can wait long enough to train pilots, they can get someone into airport security.  Then again, bombing planes is passé

I have passed the tests that the FAA gives to people.  They do something like hide a knife in a carry-on bag lining with a lot of smelly, icky laundry in the bag and expect you to find it, or hide a big metal thing in their crotch, where they think you will be too embarrassed to search when the metal-detector wand beeps.  The big airports often have no more than a 60% pass rate. 

Jesus.

"60 Minutes" had a very dispiriting piece on this Sunday about that.  They had someone from the elite FAA test group.  He had a 98% failure rate.  He said that the one time he was caught with a fake bomb, he was able to talk his way onto the plane with it, so he thinks he really had a 100% failure rate.

I, personally, feel that if an airport has less than a 100% pass rate, they should shut down until their pass rate goes up.  I've felt that for a long time. 

I knew that it was highly unlikely that someone who had been on Midway for a week would have anything to cause trouble with, but I also knew that I was the only one searching them and using the metal-detecter wand and if something happened, I would be the only one to blame.  

I know it is WAAAAAAY too easy to avoid going through the metal detectors at the airport.  I just show up, limping, with a cane, and tell them I have a Port-A-Cath and a plate in my leg, flash a little ID card from the company that made my metal implants , and they are nice and let me walk around the metal detector.  As I wear dresses, they don't wand me, because they would have to run it up between my legs and they don't have a set-aside area to do that.  They don't search my cane, either.  It's metal and hollow, and could be holding all sorts of stuff -- and could be a weapon in itself.  FAA regs require you to pop the rubber ends off the cane and look inside it.  If you can't look inside it, you're supposed to tell the person he or she will have to check it and get a wheelchair for him or her.  No one ever does that to me.    I'm a jolly-looking woman with a big smile.  Sooner or later the terrorists are going to get REALLY smart and start using women, cripples and old people to do their stuff.  No one expects us to be wicked.

There are a million and one ways to think outside the envelope.  The terrorists would only be catching up with the drug smugglers.  Maybe now they'll tell you that if you are metal you have to travel in the hold, you old cyborg you.

I was at a huge pet supply store today and saw a carrying case that I could fit into fairly comfortably.

I am a sturdy woman who has worked with crazy people in the past, and I know that people never expect a woman to fight back or to attempt to disarm an armed person violently.  I have learned that once one has had to fight back against someone being violent, it is not as bad as one expects, and one can do it much more easily in the future .  Of course, I have never been on a plane that is being hijacked, but hey.  I think we do not do our kids any favors when we teach them not to fight.  Hell yes, its not even politically correct to teach them to compete. I think people need to know what they are capable of.  You can fight and hurt someone when they've scratched you up badly with a pocket knife -- I've done it, though I was pretty hysterical at the time.  Of course, we don't call it fighting when it's with a crazy person and it's your job to do that.

When I was seven, a boy picked on me in school, and punched me.  I came home crying and my father taught me how to punch him back.  That made me much more confident about my body and what it can do.