The shoot down is the ultimate solution but we need to give the passengers as much chance as possible before that particular trigger needs to be pulled.
I want to see a federal requirement for police truncheons to be installed in holsters at every passenger seat on every commercial airliner. Furthermore, there need to be caches of reserve truncheons installed in the overhead storage compartments of all commercial airliners.
We already know that on 11 September, United Airlines flight 93 failed in its terrorist mission due to the courageous actions of a few passengers. Not too long after 9/11, there was an episode during which a deranged man was subdued by a pilot AND his fellow passengers after he invaded the cockpit. This article shows the same pattern, the passengers are the critical security element. Our citizens will not allow themselves to become passive participants in a terrorist attack.
We already trust our citizens to bear arms in defense of our nation. What fools must we be if we cannot trust them to defend their own lives aboard airliners threatened by terrorists!
Clubs are natural weapons that require virtually no training to use. The flight safety card simply needs to note where the truncheons are, what their purpose is, the ways of employing them (swung, thrust or thrown) and suggested tactics to use in subduing any terrorists. Five terrorists armed with truncheons (or truncheons AND boxcutters) will not be able to withstand the attack of fifty frightened and determined passengers armed with 100 or more truncheons. I know that if I'm a passenger on a hijacked plane, I'll take those odds any day rather than allow some SOB to make my bones part of a hole in a building or a field!
This also relieves us of the ridiculous need to forbid the carrying of pocket knives, box cutters, nail clippers, razors, bookmarks, etcetera by passengers. Fifty passengers wielding two-foot long truncheons are more than a match for any terrorist foolish enough to use pocket knives or bookmarks to try and take over an airliner. As a corollary, airport security can concentrate its efforts on what really counts (guns, explosives, aerosol cans, combat knives, tasers, laser blinding devices, etc.).
The handwriting is on the wall, when the bleep is the TSA going to get smart and read it! This article just underlines what should have been obvious almost from day one to anybody but a TSA bureaucrat. Make the passengers part of the solution and quit treating them as part of the problem!
Concealed carry permit holders have already passed background checks, proven themselves capable of using proper situational restraint, and in most cases, of being accurate with the firearm of choice.
Those who passed would carry their personal weapon on board, get to skip the usual nonsense, and be permitted at the federal level to carry in the jurisdiction they were flying to, regardless of local or state laws. Incentive enough to sign up, for most, as if being able to 'do' something about the safety of their fellow passengers and self were not enough.
Of course, this will happen when PETA is walking around, en masse, in lizard fur coats.
My next suggestion was for the issuance of a sheath knife to each passenger, for the same reason as you would issue truncheons.
After reflection, I like your idea, too, but instead of a full length police truncheon, how about one, say, at a foot to 18 inches. I have been in enough fights on school busses back when to know anything much longer will be difficult to wield with maximum efficiency, especially in a crowded environment packed with seats and passengers.
Those who, for whatever reason 'lose it' as seems to be increasingly common need not (necessarily) be killed, merely subdued. The option to finish the job, in the case of hardcore terrorists exists, but if the passengers can subdue, search, and secure them, they may have intelligence value if properly interrogated.