Word: flighted
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Almost immediately after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to annihilate Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, aviation officials let fly a slew of ferocious new security regulations. Passengers were submitted to pat-downs and luggage searches, said goodbye to their in-flight Internet access and forfeited the ability to move about the cabin or rest pillows, blankets or personal belongings in their laps for the last hour aloft, among other inconveniences. But the crackdown was short-lived; by Sunday, Dec. 27, the rules had reportedly been eased, and on Dec. 30, less than a week after they were implemented, they...
Likewise, requiring passengers to remain seated for the last hour of the flight has little apparent safety value. "I've discussed that with many people within the aviation-security field. Nobody for the life of them can figure out what that would accomplish," says Douglas Laird, president of the international aviation-security consulting firm Laird & Associates and former security director for Northwest Airlines. A lengthy transatlantic flight would provide ample opportunity to set up and detonate an explosive device; limiting passengers' movements in the final 60 minutes, Laird says, is "just a symbolic gesture...
...Consider the record: First, passengers on United Flight 93 prevented a further attack on Washington on 9/11. Then, three months later, American Airlines passengers wrestled a belligerent, biting Richard Reid to the ground, using their headset cords to restrain him. In 2007, almost a dozen passengers jumped on a gun-wielding hijacker aboard a plane in the Canary Islands. And this past November, passengers rose up against armed hijackers over Somalia. Together, then, a few dozen folks have helped save some 595 lives. {See the top 10 inept terrorist Plots...
...Karen Sherrouse was a flight attendant on the jet that Richard Reid tried to blow up. When one of her colleagues tried to stop Reid, Sherrouse rushed to help. But she couldn't get down the aisle because so many passengers had already joined the melee. "They were instantly on him," she remembers. "It was a group effort." And so it should be. The flight attendants can't be everywhere at once. Nor can TSA officers...
...After the passengers of Flight 253 deplaned in Detroit, they were held in the baggage area for more than five hours until FBI agents interviewed them. They were not allowed to call their loved ones. They were given no food. When one of the pilots tried to use the bathroom before a bomb-sniffing dog had finished checking all the carry-on bags, an officer ordered him to sit down, according to passenger Alain Ghonda, who thought it odd. "He was the pilot. If he wanted to do anything, he could've crashed the plane." It was a metaphor...