“If anyone wanted to steal a plane then why not steal a FedEx or UPS cargo plane? They are probably a lot easier to steal than a commercial airliner and no passengers to deal with.”
I actually thought about this. It is much easier to steal a passport and get on a commercial plane in some low-security airport than it is to infiltrate UPS or FedEx wait around as a sleeper until needed. Plus, you might get multiple hijackers on a commercial plane, and if you have an attractive woman among them and a Captain who likes to bring pretty girls to the cockpit . . .
As for the passengers, if you are going to use the plane for a mass casualty terrorist attack anyway, what are 240 more corpses to you. If you have a plan to do away with them, then they would be as inert to your heartless, islamofascist soul as a bunch of FedEx packages.
The most interesting discussion I have seen so far is whether you could kill the passengers by depressurizing at 45,000 feet without doing yourself in as well. I would think the sudden pressure change might be fatal even if you had oxygen. Also, is the oxygen generator for the passengers something that could be turned off?
It is a puzzle . . .
I have had hypoxia. I was part of a flight crew, on plane that had a slow leak - at first, I started to feel sluggish. All the passengers were dozing— about 50 of them, with the exception of a man dressed in military attire and a toddler. I sat by the man and told him I wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t doze off but eventually went to the cockpit and they went to a lower altitude. It was like the scene in Wizard of Oz where the Good Witch of the East made it snow after the Wicked Witch of the West put Dorothy and everyone to sleep. Just like the movie, all the passengers woke up, one by one.
I didn’t know what was happening but it was slow and I couldn’t react like I normally would have. Sadly, it makes sense that the plane could have been depressurized. If so, all the passengers are gone. No one needs the complications of hostages.
I asked a similar question and got an answer from another freeper... I'll find it and be back in a sec...
I go with the Islamics thinking passenger death = OK and more terror. Perhaps they thought, depending on how things went, they might want them as hostages, or as shields to keep themselves alive. I guess things were going swimmingly enough for them to decide they didn't need shields or ransom tokens.
HF