Another Reason to Learn Lots of Languages

This is taken from BoingBoing, where it was likely taken from a reputable news source. It's about a foiled hijacking attempt.


"Speaking to the gunman during the hijacking, the pilot realized the man did not speak French. So he used the plane’s public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: brake hard upon landing, then speed up 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 also warned women and children to move to the back of the plane in preparation for the subterfuge, the official said.

It worked. 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 from a coffee machine in his face and at his chest, and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said."

When I was writing that title, I was thinking about the hijacker and his fatal flaw, his lack of francophonic ability (yeah, I made that word up), but looking at it again, the same applies to the passengers.

Anyway, this little blurb caught my eye and my brain, leading me to think about post-911 airline passenger courage. It's kind of cool: people banding together to take down the bad guy, but, I don't know... Were hijackings never fatal pre-911? Or just not fatal on a large scale? Are there pre-911 stories about passengers outwitting and outgutsing hijackers? I suppose that there was always a chance that you would "just" be a hostage in the past; now people assume the whole plane's dying. It must be interesting and terrifying, experiencing that moment where you have to contemplate whether or not you are going to risk your life to attack the guy swinging around large guns. To be a little hokey, it makes me feel a little proud (or something) that everyday people face that decision and take the risk. Maybe it's just the terror talking, but I like to think that it's altruism.