Editor’s Note: Les Abend is a Boeing 777 captain for a major airline with 31 years of flying experience. He is a CNN aviation analyst and senior contributor to Flying magazine. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
Story highlights
Les Abend: As pilots, we're trained in protocols to deal with hijacking, such as Tuesday's EgyptAir incident. Rule one: protect the cockpit.
He says crew members must gauge threat, try to land plane so law enforcement can help. Passengers should assist crew were possible
In a world growing accustomed to a new style of terrorism, such as that experienced in Brussels and Paris and San Bernardino, it’s natural that many of us (including airline crew members) are spring-loaded to assume an airplane hijacking is about terror. But we forget that the world still has its share of garden-variety, apparently mentally unstable people willing to do something crazy.
That appears to be the case with EgyptAir Flight 181, which was forced to divert to Cyprus after departing Alexandria, Egypt, on Tuesday, bound for Cairo.
In the 1970s, hijackers commandeered and diverted flights to Cuba so often it felt almost as though you could treat landings there as scheduled arrivals. For the most part, airline crews cooperated with the hijacker, and the story — while terrifying for those affected – had a relatively happy ending, with no one harmed.
After 9/11, the cooperation strategy of airline crews changed overnight. Anyone attempting hostile action against crew members or the airplane was, and still is, considered a terrorist threat and dealt with accordingly.
For crew members in the United States, the most important objective with an active onboard threat is to protect the cockpit no matter what. Crew members follow specific procedures and guidelines known to law enforcement entities, the airline, the military and Air Traffic Control. When a potential threat is communicated, behind the scenes activity goes into overdrive. But at the end of the day, it is the airline crew that has the most control.
In the case of EgyptAir Flight 181, it appears the crew evaluated the situation appropriately. The details are still rolling out, but according to news reports, apparently the hijacker, Seif El Din Mustafa, threatened to detonate an explosive device he claimed was concealed on his person.
Airline crews in the United States are trained to fundamentally assess, first, if the threat is real. Second, if a device is involved, does it have the basic ingredients of an explosive? Unfortunately, this would have been difficult to know, if Mustafa indeed claimed that it was attached to his body. (Reports the hijacker was armed with explosives were false, according to Alexandros Zinon, permanent secretary for the Cypriot Ministry of Foreign Affairs.)
Landing the airplane, no matter the scenario, is always the best strategy. Once the plane is on the ground, it becomes a safer environment for everybody: Law enforcement can become directly involved and the pilots can use additional strategies to disable the airplane without jeopardizing safety.
One of those strategies, often discussed in airline training, is for pilots to escape the cockpit. With no pilots, the airplane doesn’t fly. Abandoning passengers is an uncomfortable decision for a captain to make, but it is a viable option. And judging by the video in Cyprus, it appears that at least one crew member used the escape rope in the cockpit to exit out the right-side cockpit window.
Happily, the end result of the EgyptAir 181 hijacking was that no one was injured or worse. Unfortunately, people exhibiting lunatic behavior still fly on airplanes. Security procedures aren’t specifically designed to guard against the deranged.
Serving alcohol in general can always increase the possibility of a passenger acting out (though there’s no evidence that was a factor in this case), and in the main that’s the kind of scenario crew members contend with. Hijackings are, thankfully, rare.
What can you, as a passenger, do if you’re aboard a flight that experiences any type of threat? Your role may be small, but could be significant: Carefully evaluate the situation, assist the cabin crew where and when you can, and always ensure the cockpit is protected.
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