A Golden Age

Imagine the following incident happening tomorrow: An American Airlines 727, headed from Athens to Rome is somehow hijacked by Shiite militiamen armed with grenades and pistols. The 727 then embarks on a remarkable, 17-day odyssey to Lebanon, Algeria, and back again. At one point passengers are removed, split into groups, and held captive in downtown Beirut. A passenger is murdered and Israel is forced to release 700 Shiite prisoners but the hijackers are able to come out of it scot-free.

Can you imagine the hell that would break loose in the air travel world if this scenario came to pass? The FAA would immediately order a halt to all air travel over the United States, probably for the full 17 days, to make sure a duplicate hijacking is not in the works somewhere else. America, in effect, would grind to a halt. The utter chaos that would result would have repercussions in the world of travel for decades, if not permanently. Security checkpoints would become day-long marathons. Iris scanning and biometric profiling would become mandatory, even for old people and infants. Travelling anywhere would become a nightmare. The First World's way of operating would be forever, irrevocably changed and indeed, the way all of humanity conducts business across the globe would have to undergo a complete rethink.

It's impossible to predict the full consequences of such a brazen terrorist act, but it's actually quite easy to imagine what would happen to humanity in general. Aren't we all glad such an incident would never be possible?

Well, guess again: this exact scenario has ALREADY HAPPENED. What? you say, appalled. Terrorists take a passenger airplane and go on a 17-day, trans-world hijacking spree? Impossible.

But it happened. This was during the so-called Golden Age of Air Terrorism, during the 70s and 80s. There were so many hijackings on commercial aircraft that the general public just began to shrug it off when another one happened. I myself remember hearing about one of these on the news and thinking, before I turned away to whatever I was doing at the time, "Not AGAIN."

Believe it or not, this was a common occurrence the world of air travel before 9/11. In a way, the 9/11 terrorists did us all a huge favour. They made sure that after them, no sane person on a hijacked commercial aircraft would allow it to be hijacked, knowing what we know now. They wouldn't stand a chance; no matter what the risk, the entire planeload of passengers and crew would band together and stop the hijackers, instead of sitting in their seats like sheep and hoping "the authorities" would take care of it.

I myself am proof of that in my own mind -- I know that I would never allow a hijacker, armed or not, to proceed with his plans if I were anywhere nearby. In 2007, on an evening flight from Montreal to Paris, the plane, 95% full of passengers, was about to push back from the terminal when an odd moaning and shouting started coming from the back.

At first, no one reacted. The plane fell deathly silent. Then, we noticed a commotion at the rear. I was about 20 rows further forward, in the window seat. We saw people walking up and down the aisle. I had heard enough.

I got out of my seat, inconveniencing my seat mates, and walked to the back to find out what was going on and to lend a hand if needed. The commotion was on the other side of the plane, in the rearmost seat row. A stewardess immediately intercepted me as I walked to the back of the plane. "Please sit down, sir!" she told me, but I said "Okay, I'll sit down. I'll sit down right over there," and I gestured to a couple of empty seats in the last middle row, immediately next to the row from which the strange shouts and moans were emanating, and brushing past her, I sat down and buckled myself in. She didn't stop me. If this asshole, whoever it was, was going to put my life in danger, I wasn't join to sit there like some sheep and allow myself to be slaughtered. I was going to do everything in my power to prevent that from happening.

Finally, the rear door opened and some police of airport security came on board and removed the offending passenger. It later became apparent that the guy was just a loony-tunes with a fear of flying. But I didn't care -- I would not let anybody threaten my life and was prepared to die in the attempt to stop that from happening. I hate to sound dramatic, but I'm deadly serious.

Later, back in my seat and in the air, I asked the same stewardess for a scotch on the rocks. She gave me a double and said "No charge. Thanks for your support!"

What's disturbing, however, is that I was the only passenger to do this. The rest of the plane sat there like sheep . . .