[so_real]

I never felt unsafe flying. No one is ever going to take over a plane with a box cutter again. We're wise to that trick. (That's why they had to hit as many planes in the air at the same time as they could on 9/11. It was a gambit designed only to work once.) When they pull the next terrorist trick out of their hats, I'd feel safer if the average passenger was armed with better than a sharpened credit cards and a ballpoint pen.

[Sherman Logan]

Absolutely. The boxcutter was not a weapon you can use to physically subdue a crowd. In fact, no knife is. For that matter, most guns aren’t effective crowd control weapons, though a plane is lousy terrain for charging a gunman. (Not that there is such a thing as good terrain for that.)

The boxcutters were used to take people hostage and initiate (we thought) the old take over a plane and fly around for a few hours or days and then the hijackers surrender or get stormed and you go home and write a book about your experiences routine. Had happened dozens of times. The passengers all followed procedure and did not resist.

On 9/11 nobody knew there was a new meme in town, but the guys on Flight 93 took less than a half hour to figure it out and launch a counterattack.

Nobody will ever take over a plane again. They might succeed in blowing one up, but there will be no more hijackings.