Honolulu-Bound Flight Diverted After Crew Discovers Box Cutter

The Associated Press ^ | AP-ES-09-30-01 2214EDT | The Associated Press

[TheOtherOne]

Honolulu-Bound Flight Diverted After Crew Discovers Box Cutter
The Associated Press
Published: Sep 30, 2001

LOS ANGELES (AP) - An American Airlines pilot made an unscheduled landing Sunday after crew members found a box cutter left on the plane by a catering employee.

Flight attendants found the box cutter in a food cart about 90 minutes after the plane departed from Dallas, said American Airlines spokesman John Hotard.

The captain decided to land the Honolulu-bound plane, carrying 220 people, in Los Angeles so every passenger could be screened again. About 3 1/4 hours later, the plane resumed its trip to Hawaii, said airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles.

The box cutter was imprinted with the name of the airline's caterer, Sky Chef. Airline officials called the company, and an employee said he had inadvertently left the knife on the cart.

"There's no big deal here," Hotard said. "It's just a guy who forgot his box cutter."

The terrorists who hijacked airplanes Sept. 11 apparently used box cutters and other small blades in their carryon baggage to take control of the jets.

AP-ES-09-30-01 2214EDT

[FITZ]

or someone hid them before the passengers boarded the plane for in-flight use later.

Also there are many foreign workers cleaning the planes and doing maintenance and security. Americans are being stripped of any possible tool of self-defense and now we are being asked to stop hijackers with our bare hands while they are likely to have weapons. Nope---I'm not flying but anyone who wants to can, but please try to keep your plane from crashing into buildings while you're up there.

[TightSqueeze]

LOS ANGELES (AP) - An American Airlines pilot made an unscheduled landing Sunday after crew members found a box cutter left on the plane by a catering employee.

It is my opinion that anyone who chooses to fly in the current climate fall into one of three categories... Fools, terrorists or employees and the lines of declination seem muted. Airline companies are unable to both provide quality service and customer safety. If I ever fly again it will be too soon.

[hispanarepublicana]

Heck, in the right hands, a shoelace could be deadly

McGyver could make a bomb out of lipstick and a tampon, couldn't he?

[VRWC_minion]

I have a mental picture of Cheech and Chong working for the caterer and loading the meals. They take a big toke off a huge joint and say

"Hey man wanta see some people panic" and they place the boxcutter on one of the trays.

[sneakypete]

Airline companies are unable to both provide quality service

This is because between hungry lawyers and the FAA,they aren't even being allowed to run their own businesses.

and customer safety.

They never were and never WILL be able to guarantee your safety.Neither will any other company,organizatio,OR GOOBERMENT! The only guarantee in life is that you will lose it.

All these damn so-called "security measures" being taken by the gooberment is pablum to lull the baby's back to sleep by convincing them "we are doing something". It's "PR versus reality".

[FITZ]

Yes, I'm just not reassured when I see the approach is to take tweezers away from middle-aged American women. In fact I'll not fly until I can have a weapon on the plane, it would be better to have the citizens armed more not less.

[1Old Pro]

This is absolute lunacy. Has everyone gone completely insane???????

Apparently.

[steve-b]

Haven't thought about mirrors, but I understand that they are considering banning hot water for coffee and tea (throwing it in someones face can be a problem).

These people are absolute idiots. Even if the pre-9/11 passivity continued, nobody could hijack a plane with a cup of hot coffee -- the perp can burn one or two people, and then he's got nothing.

[hispanarepublicana]

nobody could hijack a plane with a cup of hot coffee

Have you ever TASTED airline coffee? They could threaten me by trying to make me taste it....

[fone]

Moronic indeed! Why don't they just handcuff everyone to their seats during the flight?

/sarcasm

[ChemistCat]

What about truck bombs? They could blow up a bridge you're crossing, a building you're parking next to, or a dam upvalley from you. What about bioweapons? Did the last person to use that restroom stall come in with a virulent new genetically-engineered strain of influenza on his/her hands, and touch everything--stall door latch, lavatory, towel dispenser, doorknob--that you're going to touch on your way through, right before you rub your eyes?

Staying away from airplanes doesn't make you safe. Airlines are now the least likely vector for an attack. Bin Laden is not a one-trick pony.

[TRY ONE]

"This is absolute lunacy. Has everyone gone completely insane??????? "

Dittos!

There are so many potential weapons! As one who once studied martial arts...ball point pens, eye glasses, etc. etc. can always be "DANGEROUS"....

[supercat]

I have no problem opening boxes with my car keys.

Depends on the box and the keys. On the other hand, you'd better keep your mouth shut or you'll be required to put your keys in your checked baggage.

nb: Keys make much better weapons than a lot of the things which were banned. Go figure.

[ravingnutter]

Our company has now introduced a "terrorism awareness" course to our safety program because we have many employees that travel frequently. I have suggested to our company that we teach self-defense to all our employees during the training.

[TightSqueeze]

Moronic indeed! Why don't they just handcuff everyone to their seats during the flight?

Fly united - Shackled!

[TightSqueeze]

Staying away from airplanes doesn't make you safe.

But the odds of dying on one is reduced to one falling on you.

[SKYDRIFTER]

Saturday September 29 8:42 AM ET
Israeli Pilot Says Air Threats Ignored
By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM (AP) - During a 1970 hijacking, the Israeli pilot refused to open the cockpit door, even as a hijacker with grenades tucked in her bra held a pistol to a flight attendant's head and demanded entry.

Warning his undercover security guards to hang on, the pilot, Uri Bar-Lev, sent the plane diving like a free-falling elevator, knocking the hijacker and her accomplice off their feet. One of the culprits was shot, and the woman was captured.

Three decades later, Bar-Lev says the world has yet to heed warnings about aviation terrorism and take steps to stop it, including locking cockpit doors, putting air marshals on flights and creating a resolve to fight terror.

``I didn't succeed because I was a better pilot,'' said Bar-Lev, a former Israeli air force captain. ``It was only because of my attitude that we were not going to be hijacked. ... Our mindset is to fight terror.''

President Bush (news - web sites) has revealed a plan that envisions stationing 4,000 to 5,000 troops at the nation's 420 commercial airports for up to six months. Also, many more in-flight air marshals would be trained and a federal agency would be set up to oversee the screening of passengers and luggage.

``This nation will not live in fear,'' Bush said.

Bar-Lev, 70, said crews need to be trained as a last line of defense against hijackers.

Bar-Lev also said pilots and crews need to be granted legal authority to stop and, if necessary, kill hijackers. He said under existing laws in some countries pilots could be prosecuted for killing hijackers.

``The world had 30 years to learn,'' he said. ``What happened? Nothing.''

Israel's national airline, El Al, is known for its stringent security routines: aggressively interviewing and profiling passengers, X-raying luggage and hiring pistol packing guards as well as former air force pilots and former soldiers as crew.

In 1970, El Al was still learning. From 1968 to 1973, Bar-Lev said, there were 63 hijacking attempts, some of them on El Al flights.

On Sept. 6, 1970, Bar-Lev had ordered two suspicious passengers off his plane before taking off from Amsterdam. As the two, who claimed to be diplomats, boarded a Pan American Airways flight, bombs were found in their attache cases.

The Pan Am plane was evacuated and was engulfed in flames in a controlled explosion. Bar-Lev was also suspicious of a couple with South American passports, but after ordering crew members to check them, he took off for New York.

The pair were part of a brigade of Palestinian hijackers that commandeered four planes that day.

At 31,000 feet above Europe, a warning bell set off by a crew member sounded in the cockpit and through the door came a flight attendant's voice saying that a woman was holding a pistol to her head and demanding entry to the cockpit.

The woman was Leila Khaled, a Palestinian guerrilla who just a year earlier had hijacked a TWA plane to Damascus, Syria.

An image entered Bar-Lev's mind: Israeli air force pilots held hostage in Syria and tortured during the 1967 Mideast War.

``My first thought was that we are not going to be brought to Syria,'' Bar-Lev said.

He peered at the hijackers through a cockpit video monitor and watched as one of the flight attendants tackled the woman's accomplice and was shot five times in the chest. The flight attendant survived.

Still refusing to open the door, Bar-Lev sent the plane into a dive, descending 12,000 feet per minute. Khaled fell to the ground and fainted. A security guard shot dead the other hijacker.

The plane landed in London.

Khaled was later released in Britain in exchange for more than 300 passengers who had been hijacked and taken to the Middle East. The episode touched off the 1970 Black September war between Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization (news - web sites) inside Jordan.

Thirty-one years later, the Sept. 11 suicide attacks in the United States made it apparent to Bar-Lev how little the world had learned.

``Nobody was ready or prepared to fight aviation terror,'' he said. ``The problem is not whether to do this or that. It's the concept. First you have to decide to fight.''

[ChemistCat]

I don't know about you but I found the empty skies 9-12 profoundly eerie and disturbing. I like being the race that makes its own wings. I don't want that taken away from us. If we don't fly, the airlines die. Thousands of jobs gone for good, whole sectors of the economy wasted, Hawaii and Alaska essentially cut out of the United States. If we are too scared to fly, we might as well invite Osama to blow up every airplane we have. And why stop there? Trains and trucks are vulnerable. Let's be too scared to move anything and anyone around the country, and see how well our land can support us if we live like Afghanis.

[FITZ]

Airlines are now the least likely vector for an attack.

How? What is that different except they're taking tweezers away from normal American citizens. Have they changed the cleaning or security staff to make sure there are no accomplices working there?