Resumo de Aircraft Hijacking:histroy And Prevention

Aircraft hijacking (also known as Skyjacking) is the take-over of an aircraft, by a person or group, usually armed. Unlike the hijacking of land vehicles, it is usually not perpetrated in order to rob the cargo. Rather, most aircraft hijackings are committed to use the passengers as hostages in an effort to obtain transportation to a given location, to hold them for ransom, or, as in the case of the American planes that were hijacked to Cuba during the 1970s, the release of comrades being held in prison. Another common motive is publicity for some cause or grievance. In the September 11, 2001 attacks, the use of hijacked planes as suicide missiles changed the way hijacking was perceived as a security threat ? though similar usages had apparently been attempted by Samuel Byck in 1974 and on Air France Flight 8969 in 1994.
One task of airport security is to prevent hijacks by screening passengers and keeping anything that could be used as a weapon (even smaller objects like nail clippers and boxcutters, for example) off aircraft.
Background
Hijackings for hostages have usually followed a pattern of negotiations between the hijackers and the authorities, followed by some form of settlement -- not always the meeting of the hijackers' original demands -- or the storming of the aircraft by armed police or special forces to rescue the hostages. Previous to September, 2001, the policy of most airlines was for the pilot to comply with hijackers' demands in the hope of a peaceful outcome. Since then, policies have reversed course, in favor of arming and armoring the cockpit.
Partial list of hijackings
1958: First Cuba-to-U.S. hijacking
1960: The first US-to-Cuba hijacking
1968: The first Arab-Israeli hijacking, as three members of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijack an El Al plane to Rome. Diverting to Algiers the negotiations extend over forty days. Both the hijackers and the hostages go free. This was the first and the only successful hijacking of an El Al flight.
1970 May 15: Dymshits-Kuznetsov hijacking affair, a group of Soviet refuseniks attempt to hijack aircraft
1971: D. B. Cooper hijacks Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 and obtains $200,000 ransom for the release of the plane's passengers. Cooper proceeds to parachute from the rear of the Boeing 727 and is never found.
1997: Air Malta Two men who hijacked an Air Malta airplane en route from Malta to Turkey on June 9, 1997 surrendered to police at Cologne's airport early on the same day and freed without incident about 80 crew members and passengers on board.
1999: All Nippon Airways Flight 61 is hijacked by a lone man. He kills the pilot before he is subdued.
1999-2000: Kashmiri militants hijack Indian Airlines Flight 814 and divert it to Kandahar. After a week-long stand-off India agrees to release three jailed Kashmiri militants in exchange for the hostages. 1 hostage was stabbed to death and his body thrown on the tarmac as a "warning attack"
2001: September 11 attacks, eastern USA: 19 terrorists hijack four planes (American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77, United Airlines Flight 93, and United Airlines Flight 175; two of the planes, United Airlines Flight 175 and Flight 11, are used as missiles and deliberately flown into each of New York City's Twin Towers, while American Airlines Flight 77 is used in a similar fashion at the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C.. They are the three most deadly of all aircraft hijackings. In the fourth case the intention is likely the same but the passengers, learning of the fate of the other three planes, attacked the cockpit, causing the hijackers to crash the plane in rural Pennsylvania, killing all on board. By official count, 2,752 people died at the World Trade Center, 189 died in Washington, D.C., and 44 died in Pennsylvania.

Prevention
There has been talk of fortifying cockpit doors to prevent would-be hijackers from entering anning control of the aircraft. In the United States and Australia, air marshals have also been added to some flights to deter and thwart hijackers. In addition, some have proposed remote control systems for aircraft whereby no one on board would have control over the plane's flight.
In the case of a serious risk that an aircraft will be used for flying into a target, it may have to be shot down, killing all passengers and crew, to prevent more serious consequences.
United States commercial aircraft pilots now have an option of carrying a pistol on the flight deck, as a last resort to thwart hijack attempts. Opponents proposed that shooting down the aircraft and killing everyone onboard would be more reasonable than a pilot firing a pistol in an airliner at a flight deck intruder. Explosive decompression in an aircraft, however, is a myth, and their objections are mostly hyperbole. [1]
Since "Hi, Jack" and "hijack" are homophones while aircraft are very vulnerable to any breaches to safety and security, this pronunciation is now widely regarded as a serious taboo in more airports. Los Angeles International Airport has reminded people not to say "Hi, Jack", but "Hello, Jack" is no problem.

Resumos Relacionados