No that was real and existed in the US prior to 9/11/2001. If this story turns out to be completely true, I'll give up on security all together. If it is true, this has to be the dumbest flight crew on earth.
What could the flight crew have done?
Air Marshals were on board....seems every passenger was on to these guys....and I suppose if they had made a run to the cockpit you would have seen 200 Todd Beamers go into action.
It was stated in the first article that there were air marshals on the flight watching them so just maybe the flight crew were told not to interfere so that the marshals could watch what they were trying to pull. I would think that the flight crew were told by the marshals that they would not let things get out of hand but they need to learn what new tactics the terrorist were trying to come up with.