I have seen a lot of fascinating technological ideas about making planes hijack-proof. The real answer is simple, and politically-incorrect. An armed citizenry. Had any single person had a gun on those planes, the whole scenario might have been different.

The problem in our country is not too many guns. The problem is that there are not enough guns in the hands of honest citizens.

There is an excellent SF book by L. Neil Smith called "The Probability Broach." The premise is that an American homicide detective is accidentally blown "sideways" in time, into the parallel world of the "North American Confederacy", where the Whiskey Rebellion succeeded in 1794 and we ended up with an anarchic/libertarian society. In this scene, narrated by the detective, he and some friends are going to travel cross country in a high-tech airship, and are getting ready to board a shuttle to take them to the airship:

Riding the corridor to the elevators, we encountered a security setup not too different from the ones back home. Ed bellied up, drew his Browning, pulled the clip and chamber round. Lucys horse-pistol materialized from some region of her person, and, Clarissa unsheathed her Webley Electric. Following their example, I unholstered my Smith & Wesson, wondering what would happen next.



At home, the officer would lose control of her sphincters, and forty thousand federal marshals would trample in and haul us away for the next several eons. If they discovered something besides weapons: bulllion, tobacco, Japanese merchandise, they'd add a snotty smirk. Whatever happened to the Fourth and Fifth amendments at U.S. airports? Or the First, for that matter?

"Excuse me, sir," the attendant said politely. Is your ammunition in mompliance with aeroline policies?"

Ed nodded. "Frangibles, at under nine hundred feet per second."

"Thank you, sir. Please pass this way. Madame?" Clarissa showed her Webley. Its tiny stingers would never penetrate an aircraft body.

Lucy's bazooka caused a momentary logjam: the .50 Gabbet Fairfax isn't exactly common. Things got settled by reference to the Telecom--its 400-grain slugs were safe--adequate for defense, but harmless to the flying machine--as long as they showed a special air-travel headstamp.

The official took a hard look at my revolver. Naturiny,-ihe couldn3ti-And it in any of her references. "I'm terribly sorry, sir, would you mind if we took your, er, gun, until you reach your destination?"

Ed grinned smugly. "See the trouble that museum piece causes? Use the cartridges in the yellow box."

ELMER'S CUSTOM HANDLOADS--CERTIFIED FOR AIR TRAVEL

I reloaded cylinder, speed-loaders, and my derringer--which caused another round of dithering--with this new stuff: bright-yellow plastic bullets. They'd explode into harmless powder on aerocraft-tolerance materials. Ed poured my real ammo into his suitcase, for which I got another ribbing, and an automated dumbwaiter collected our bags for the shuttle's belly.

"Look, frlends," I said; once we'd cleared security, "I know you're, enthusiastic about weapons but haven't you heard about hijacking?" I had to explain.

"Silly way to commit suicide," Ed laughed. "And if you lived, you'd be paying restitution the rest of your life."

"If they caught you."

"You'd be begging for it, by the time the paying customers finished with--"

"What about capturing the crew?" I insisted.

"Like to see 'em try that on my ship!" Lucy, our former combat pilot said. "One of these big balloons, they'd just switch over to auxiliary control, while the regular crew just mopped your brains off the dashboard."

"Security's pretty good, these days," Ed added. "Crew-country bulkheads are titanium. No one gets in unless invited. Besides, the minute you ban handguns, criminals will take up less detectable and less discriminating weapons. Bombs, for instance"

I persisted. "But, what happens if I point a gun at the passenger sitting next to me, and threaten to blow his head off if they don't take me, say, to Algeria?"

"Algeria?" Lucy asked. "Isn't that somewhere at the bottom of the Sahara Sea?"

"Come on, you're stalling! What happens if I take a hostage?"

"The hostage kills you," Clarissa sald, and that seemed to be that.



Buy the book here. (scroll down to the bottom)

Of course, in our society, it needs to be scaled back a bit. How about training and arming at least some of the crew and flight attendants, just as a start?