Pfft... box cutters are just SO pre-9/11.

All the cool kids are using liquids!

Or, y'know, whatever the hell the government wants us to be afraid of this week.

Before we get all hysterical, no one could successfully hijack a plane these days armed with nothing but box cutters.

@2 Oh yeah? Why is that? I know that, as a passenger, I'm not any better equipped to take down some madmen(people?) armed with box cutters than I was pre 911. So, unless the flight staff is carrying weapons, I don't see how some hijackers would be any less successful than before.

Okay, I stand corrected. After having read the actual article, it seems the flight staffs are armed...

Actually, your tray table can be used as a much more effective device.

Just grab a blanket or a coat, rush the guy and take him down - it's not that hard.

I'm not any better equipped to take down some madmen(people?) armed with box cutters

I think the point was that, pre-9/11, passengers might have been willing to just sit by and wait for the feds or whoever to rescue them because there will be demands and offers and so on and then everything will be fine. Now? Not so much. I imagine a hijacker with a box cutter would survive approximately as long as it took the passengers to tear the hijacker apart with their teeth, regardless of how many of them got cut up in the process.

Gee Will. I'll be sure and be a hero if I'm ever in such a horrible predicament. I'll expect you to do the same.

Oh come on, Dan. So finding a box of box cutter automatically means that planes are going to crash into buildings? TSA misses stuff all the time but that doesn't means that planes are falling down from the skies all the time. I think we can all do with being less hysterical. Plus agree with Judah. Passengers are much more likely to take matters into their own hands these days.

yes -- passengers are far more willing to take action now.

You may be right, @6, and I got the point. Alls I was saying is that I'm not any less of a wuss than I was before. I'm a girl, damnit!

@3
If you let some dude take over your entire plane with a fucking box cutter, you deserve to die.

Regardless of how armed the flight staff is, or how much the passengers fight back, the main point is that no one is getting into the cockpit armed only with box cutters anymore.

@10
You know, Callie, girls are physically designed to give birth. If you're a wuss you're a wuss, but don't put it off on your sex.

Callie, relax. You don't have to be a hero.

Pre 9/11, the doors to cockpits were never locked; they didn't even have locks on them. And even if they could have been locked, they were made of flimsy enough material that a 6 year old could kick it in.

After 9/11, all the airlines retrofitted the cockpit doors. They now all stay locked, are much sturdier, and somewhat bulletproof. You'd need a shotgun or a grenade to get past that door now. A box cutter might scare a few passengers, but it won't get you into the cockpit any more. Not even if you had a whole box of box cutters.

I am relaxed. And I have a high tolerance for pain. The wuss is an internal thing. I'm terrified of dying on an airplane, but I don't think it's the kind of terror that would motivate me to rush a scary terrorist with a blanket in tow. It's probably the kind of terror that would make me hyperventilate. Who knows though, maybe I would surprise myself. Also, Mr. Poe, you're a dick.

There's no evidence that box cutters were used on September 11th. And, as people have stated above, the likelihood of passengers passively accepting their fate seems unlikely, compared to the days when we thought terrorists wanted to take the plane somewhere and land, alive.

Up until about a month ago I would have looked at that picture with sad detachment; after my first ever trip to NYC in April and seeing ground zero for myself, it affects me almost as much as it did on the actual 9/11.

I think that people on an airplane, post 9/11, would do anything to anyone to keep from going straight into the fucking ground.

@7 - in a plane with 80 to 300 people in it, you can be sure there will be at least 5-10 like me who are not just trained in what to do, but who will now do it and get the rest of you to do it too.

Pre 9 11 you might sit it out and die like a sheep, but those days are long gone. No deferments for you.

Ya'll are plum ignorant if you think the next Al Qaeda attack in the U.S. will use commercial airplanes. These guys are nothing if not freakishly resourceful. My bet is on an exploding Cadillac Escalade, or some similar Behemoth-mobile, at a suburban shopping mall. Any takers?

Hooray Will! He's a hero! Got a bullet head and not afraid to use it!

On my American Airlines flight last year from Seattle to Detroit I shelled out the extra cash for the 5$ food box and discovered to my horror that it had a knife inside.

I caught the stewardess' attention and held the knife up with a puzzled look on my face and she said - "I know, I know it's impossible to spread anything with that huh?"

The knife was plastic and small - I took several pictures of it after I used the serrated blade to cut through 120 thick glossy pages of the in-flight magazine all at once.

I still have the scar from when I needed 6 stitches from when I cut myself with a plastic picnic knife when I was 10 years old. So tell me - how would this NOT be used to slit someone's throat after taking them hostage.

Nearly ALL post-9/11 security measures are a joke - and the airlines know it.

but how are they going to get into the box?

Very true - once you have a hostage and have the means to kill them if your demands are not met - what happens when they refuse you access to the cockpit.

Which reinforces my statement - nearly ALL post-9/11 security measures are a joke. The make us stand in line for 3+ hours, throw away our 200$ prescription medicines at the x-ray, insist you shell out money to the vendors INSIDE the airport to buy a new pair of nail clippers - when at the same time they practically HAND you a knife as you walk on the plane?

On a lighter note - I wish dearly Richard Reid had been the bra bomber, not the shoe bomber.

I bought a $6 bottle of water at JFK last month. No joke.

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