Flight 93

[aussiefly]

Just finished watching the Discovery channel documentary on Flight 93 and i've gotta say it's pretty moving stuff.

Those people on board are genuine heroes. They had to make the ultimate decision and then whatever happened they followed through. It's likely that they saved many, many more lives by what they did.

I would hope faced with a similar situation I would be able to summon the courage that they all did.

God speed, all of them.

 

[FN FAL]

Panic as man storms cockpit of Nairobi-bound jet

December 29, 2000
Web posted at: (1401 GMT)

NAIROBI, Kenya -- A British Airways plane nose-dived twice during a flight to Kenya after a passenger broke into the cockpit and grabbed the controls.
The man, described by passengers as strong and hysterical, was wrestled to the floor by crew and passengers.

He had disengaged the autopilot on the Boeing 747-400, causing the jet to lurch violently before the crew could regain control, passengers said. The plane eventually landed safely in Nairobi at 10.10 a.m. local time and the man was arrested.

Jemima Khan, wife of former Pakistan cricketer Imran Khan, was among the 379 passengers.

Airborne alarms

Nairobi police identified the man as a 27-year-old Kenyan and described him as "a suspected mental patient."

British Airways said: "A number of passengers are believed to have suffered relatively minor injuries as the aircraft made sudden manoeuvres during the struggle."

Captain William Hagan, 53, sustained bite wounds, the airline said.
"In the struggle the intruder bit my ear and finger but my first officer, Richard Webb, and I managed to get him out of the cockpit while my other first officer, Phil Watson, flew the aircraft.

"With the help of some passengers we managed to restrain the intruder," Hagan said in an airline statement.

Four passengers and a female member of the cabin crew were taken to a Nairobi hospital, the airline said.

An airline spokesman said the crew was "in shock" -- one is thought to have suffered a broken ankle -- and passengers making connections at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport said they thought the plane was going to crash.

"Stuff was flying around. We thought the plane was going to fall. Some people hurt their heads," said Zoe McNaughton, a 19-year-old student from Kent, England.

Passenger Benjamin Goldsmith, who was with his sister, Jemima Khan, and mother Lady Annabel Goldsmith on the flight, told Sky News television that the man appeared hysterical.

Khan was travelling with her two children, Kasim, aged 18 months, and Sulaiman, four.

"Suddenly the plane went into this violent, violent dive, like shuddering, and went very, very steeply downwards and everyone was woken up by the screaming of grown men," Goldsmith said.

"Then the plane stopped diving and went into another dive at a really weird angle going down to the left and basically very, very steep, violent shuddering, and then the engines cut out altogether and there was total silence, apart from the noise.

"The lights went out and the oxygen masks came down and the plane sort of regained control after what must have been about 20 or 30 seconds. This was pretty serious."

He said the pilot told passengers that "a very nasty man just tried to kill us all."

"Every single person on that airplane was absolutely terrified, there were grown men screaming, people praying aloud."

After the incident the pilot spoke to his wife and other passengers, saying if it had lasted "four or five seconds more…the co-pilot wouldn't have been able to regain control because the thing was about to go on to its back," Goldsmith said.

Todd Engstrom, 41, from Portland, Oregon, was travelling to Kenya with his wife and two young daughters to do volunteer work.

He said that about two hours before landing, while most passengers were sleeping, the plane took a sudden dive.

"A breathless pilot said that a madman tried to take control of the plane and crash the plane," Angstrom said.

"He said the person had been restrained and asked for patience from us."

 

[FN FAL]

December 29, 2000
Web posted at: (1410 GMT)

Friday’s scare aboard a Kenya-bound British Airways jet is the latest incident at high altitude:

October 30, 2000: Two Royal Jordanian flights -– one from Amman to Abu Dhabi and the other from Amman to Qatar -– are forced to make emergency landings after a bomb hoax.

October 14, 2000: Five hijackers surrender in Baghdad, Iraq, after taking over a Saudi Air flight from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to London’s Heathrow Airport. The hijackers initially demanded that the flight, with 112 passengers, land in Damascus, Syria. The plane diverted to Baghdad after being refused permission to land in Syria.

May 25, 2000: A Philippine Airlines Airbus 330 carrying 291 people is hijacked by a man who robs everyone on board before jumping from the aircraft in a homemade parachute. The man fails to survive the jump. His body is discovered that day.

May 11, 2000: The crew of an Egypt Air Airbus 321 flight from Cairo to Aswan overpowers a man who tried to hijack the plane with a jar of hair gel.

July 1999: A pilot who overpowers a hijacker on a Nippon Airways flight from Tokyo to Sapporo dies of stab wounds incurred during the struggle.

April 1999: Six people are injured -– including a man who is slammed into the overhead lockers -– when a British Airways jumbo jet en route from Australia to Singapore runs into strong "clear air" turbulence at 30,000 feet. The plane is so violently buffeted that a number of passengers are sent flying out of their seats. Kathryn Blair, daughter of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, is among the passengers on the flight.