Combs Spouts Off

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Posts Tagged ‘airport security’

Passengers beat hijacker

Posted by Richard on February 16, 2007

The era of airliner hijackings really is over. After 9/11, it’s doubtful that you could find an airplane anywhere full of people who’ll sit still for someone commandeering their flight. Not even in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania:

TENERIFE, Canary Islands (AP) – A quick–thinking pilot thwarted a gun–toting hijacker on a flight from Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands by discreetly warning passengers he would brake hard upon landing, then speed up just as abruptly to knock the man off balance – and telling them to be ready to pounce, Spanish officials said Friday.

The trick worked to perfection, with travelers and crew waiting until the hijacker was on the floor to douse him in the face and chest with boiling water from a coffee machine and beat him into submission.

"The man deserves a medal," Air Mauritania spokesman Ahmedou Ahmedou said of the company’s veteran pilot after the ordeal Thursday evening.

The hijacker, who wanted to be flown to France in order to request political asylum, brandished two pistols. Apparently, airport security isn’t so hot in Mauritania.

So, how did the clever pilot and passengers pull off this trick?

Speaking to the gunman during the hijacking, the pilot realized the man did not understand French. So he used the plane’s public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: slam on the brakes upon landing, then accelerate abruptly. The idea was to catch the hijacker off balance, and have crew members and men sitting in the front rows of the plane jump on him, the Spanish official said.

The pilot warned women and children to move to the back rows of the plane in preparation for the subterfuge, the official said.

It worked. As the plane landed on Gran Canaria, the man was standing in the middle aisle when the pilot carried out his maneuver, and he fell to the floor, dropping one of his two 7mm pistols. Flight attendants then threw boiling water in his face and at his chest, and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said.

According to at least one Spanish news source, authorities are looking into the possibility that there’s more to this hijacking than meets the eye:

The security forces are questioning – via an interpreter – the hijacker and are investigating whether anybody else was involved in the attack, after one passenger said that other people possibly could have been in on the plan.

Eyewitnesses said they had seen several people take off running across the airport’s runways after exiting the plane.

Hmm.
 

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Veiled threat

Posted by Richard on December 20, 2006

A couple of months ago, many Muslims were outraged when British MP Jack Straw politely suggested that Muslim women uncover at least their noses and mouths when meeting with him:

Jack Straw, the ex-foreign secretary, has angered Muslim groups by suggesting women who wear veils over their face can make community relations harder.

The Blackburn MP says the veil is a "visible statement of separation and of difference" and he asks women visiting his surgery to consider removing it.

The remarks attracted an angry response from some organisations representing Muslims.

It was "astonishing" that Mr Straw chose to "selectively discriminate on the basis of religion", said Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission.

Rajnaara Akhtar, who chairs the organisation Protect-Hijab, suggested the "appalling" comments showed "a deep lack of understanding".

Mr Straw was putting women "into a very awkward position by compromising the faith they believe in and that is ill-placed", Council of Lancashire Mosques chairman Hamid Kureshi told BBC Radio Five Live.

Well, now we know at least one reason why radical Muslims stridently defend the wearing of the burqa and niqab: it makes it so much easier for terrorists wanted for murder to travel freely in and out of countries that value political correctness and multi-culturalism above security, common sense, and equality before the law:

Only here in the UK could this happen, Mustaf Jama wanted over the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, assumed his sister’s identity — wearing the niqab and using her passport — to evade supposedly stringent checks at Heathrow, according to police sources.

The use of the niqab, which leaves only a narrow slit for the eyes, highlights flaws in British airport security. At the time, Jama was Britain’s most wanted man, while Heathrow was on a heightened state of alert after the 7/7 terrorist atrocities in London five months previously. Not so much a secure state as an episode of the Keystone Cops.

Detectives believe that Jama, 26, was allowed to board an international flight from Heathrow because no attempt was made to uncover his face.

A good libertarian argument can be made against requiring airline passengers to identify themselves. But this is simply absurd: They require IDs — and demand that the name on the ID exactly match the name on the ticket. They check those IDs against a terrorist watch list. But if you say, "I’m a Muslim woman and I don’t believe in showing my face," (actually, you don’t have to say anything, so your voice won’t give you away), they just wave you right through.

It’s reverse profiling — taking the least precaution with the highest-risk passengers. Welcome to Bizarro World.
 

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Thinking about air travel

Posted by Richard on November 29, 2006

Ben Shapiro came up with an interesting thought experiment:

You are sitting in the concourse of an airport, preparing for your flight, when out of the corner of your eye, you spot six Arab men praying loudly in Arabic.

"Okay," you say to yourself, "that’s a bit disquieting. But praying isn’t terrorism."

You glance at your watch. It’s time to board the plane. Sure enough, there’s the boarding announcement. Suddenly, you hear the six Arab men chanting loudly. "Allah! Allah! Allah!"

"Okay," you say to yourself, "maybe they’re still praying."

You board the flight and take your seat. You notice that two of the Arab men sit at the back of the airplane, two more sit in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle, and two sit at the front of the airplane.

"Okay," you say to yourself, "perhaps they couldn’t get seats together."

A few seconds later, you hear a stewardess explain to another passenger that the six Arab men moved from their assigned seats to the new seating arrangement. And it seems that the two Arab men up front are now asking for seat-belt extensions.

"Okay," you say to yourself, "they don’t look overweight. But perhaps they have indigestion."

Except that the two Arab men quickly tuck the seat-belt extensions underneath their seats. Then they begin speaking in both English and Arabic about President Bush, the war in Iraq, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

You spot another passenger signaling a stewardess. Minutes later, the six Arab men are escorted from the airplane.

Secretly, you’re breathing easier. You make it to your destination without further incident. But when you turn on the television that evening, you see the six Arab men telling the media that their removal from the flight was a reflection of American xenophobia and ignorance.

Go read the rest to see what he imagines happening over the ensuing months. And then a year later. See if you don’t feel a shiver down your spine.
 

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Common sense partially restored at FAMS

Posted by Richard on August 25, 2006

I was under the misapprehension that the Federal Air Marshal Service’s idiotic dress code had been scrapped after the moronic former director Thomas Quinn left. Quinn insisted that male air marshals wear suits or sport coats, dress shirts, ties, and properly shined dress shoes. If you’ve flown anywhere lately, you know just how conspicuous these guys were.

As an aside, I’ve read dozens of stories over the past few years about FAMS, many having to do with the dress code controversy, and I don’t recall a single one mentioning female air marshals. Surely, there are female air marshals — why do all these sensitive, diversity-embracing, equality-endorsing journalists churn out story after story describing a coat-and-tie dress requirement for men without saying something about the women’s dress code?

At some point, the rules were “relaxed” in undisclosed, but minor, ways — apparently, ties became optional and casual shirts were permitted as long as they still had a collar and were covered by a sport coat. Now, Quinn’s successor, Dana Brown, has gone further:

Brown told air marshals in the memo that the policy was being amended to “allow you to dress at your discretion.”

He added that the new policy was designed to let air marshals blend in while concealing their weapons.

Frank Terreri, an air marshal who is president of an association that represents about 1,500 of his colleagues, said yesterday he welcomed the changes.

“It’s really a huge step in maintaining the federal air marshals’ anonymity,” Terreri said.

Complaints that the loosening of the restrictions did not go far enough to help shield air marshals’ identities led the service to issue the new policy yesterday, officials said.

Brown is also allowing air marshals to choose their own hotels, within some spending and other guidelines:

Marshals claimed that their undercover status was threatened because they had to stay at designated hotels and show their credentials when checking in.

A recent report to Congress found that the Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Airport Hotel in Florida had designated the Federal Air Marshal Service “company of the month” because of the number of rooms it had reserved at the hotel.

I’ll bet that “WELCOME AIR MARSHALS” sign out front didn’t help, either. 😉

Brown sounds like a vast improvement over Quinn, but this isn’t a total victory for common sense. For one thing, Brown’s memo said the policy changes take effect on Sept. 1st — what the heck is the point of the delay? Why not immediately? “For the next week, please continue following the admittedly stupid existing dress rules. The Department of Mindless Bureaucracy requires that all changes in personnel rules take effect on the first day of the month.”

For another thing, Brown still hasn’t addressed the major remaining problem undermining air marshals’ anonymity: they’re required to board the plane before any “civilian” passengers. When you’re among the first passengers down the ramp, and you step into the plane and see a guy in a sport coat seated in row 23, well… don’t piss him off, he’s armed.

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Thoughts about the airliner plot

Posted by Richard on August 11, 2006

I’m flying back to Tennessee tomorrow (my dad is dying), so airport security and airliner safety are personally meaningful issues for me right now. By now, everybody and their brother have had their say about the Brits’ foiling of the airliner plot, but I want to throw out a few random thoughts I’ve been having.

  • Given the disturbing picture of British Muslims painted by surveys in the past year, I was pleased to hear that the original tip that led to the conspiracy came from a British Muslim who told police he was concerned about suspicious statements and behavior by a Muslim aquaintance.
  • Critics of the Bush Doctrine often point to Pakistan as evidence that the doctrine is not an idealistic commitment to democracy, but hypocritical and immoral. They have a point — you have to hold your nose while cozying up to the Musharraf regime, that’s for sure. But Pakistan apparently played a vital role in foiling this plot — that kind of cooperation is a pretty powerful "yeah, but…"
  • I heard someone say on the radio yesterday that the Brits initially didn’t inform the U.S. about their investigation because they were afraid of CIA leaks; this story suggests there’s something to that claim.
  • OTOH, I also heard that the Brits got critical information from the much-maligned NSA "wiretap" (actually, phone record data mining) program. And from a "sneak and peek" search. You want to argue that the NSA monitoring and the "sneak and peek" search are such egregious violations of civil liberties that it would be better if ten airliners carrying maybe 4000 people had blown up over U.S. airports? Good luck persuading people of that.
  • Bush identified the enemy properly as "Islamic fascists" instead of as "terrorism," which is a tactic, not an enemy. Yay! I believe that’s only the second time he’s done so. CAIR, the organization dedicated to concealing, excusing, and defending Islamic fascism in the U.S., is terrribly upset. Good.
  • OTOH, TSA and Homeland Security are still playing the political correctness game and focusing on dangerous objects instead of dangerous people. It’s the gun control mentality writ large, and it’s stupid and dangerous. Yes, I know — not all Muslims are terrorists. But virtually all the terrorists in the world are young male Muslims, you fools, so focus your limited resources where they’re most warranted — not on the Maalox belonging to somebody’s grandmother or the contact lens drops of a tattooed and pierced teenage girl.
  • On a related note, I’m pretty sick of hearing Michael Chertoff reassure us that a young male Muslim shooting Jews in Washington has nothing to do with terrorism; that a bunch of missing young male Muslim Egyptians are nothing to worry about; and that we shouldn’t be overly concerned about two young male Muslims from Dearborn’s "Hezbollah High" who had information about airport security checkpoints and flights, $10,000 in cash, and a bunch of disposable cell phones of the type used to trigger bombs. Is this guy a complete fool, or does he just think the American people are?
     

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