Hijack

TK211X

TK211X

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Aug 29, 2015
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Him
No, i'm not saying hi to my friend who's name is Jack.

This may be a touchy subject but I feel it has great importance for general discussion among GA Pilots. lets say for a given variety of a situation, You are an average aged pilot with a PPL. You take a passenger with you who you recently met, get up in the air, then trouble. (Seized controls or threats) Aside from the usual squawk code, what do YOU do? What about a threat on the ground to take you into the air?


I personally have heard a few things from pretending to fall ill to purposefully "failing" the engine to pretending to be a maintenance employee.




Small note, I have not found a thread like this so if one exists I don't mind moving it/deleting it.
 
How do we know you're not a terrorist planning to hijack a GA airplane?
 
In the air, seeing as I don't particularly want to die, whatever gets me to an airport (or farm field).

On the ground? Toss them the keys and run. The chance that they will harm anyone but themselves is zero. But I would be out the cost of my airplane since acts of terror are excluded in the insurance coverage.
 
Seriously, you're laying awake nights pondering this?
 
Well - if the threat occurs on the ground, that's easy: fight and do what you can. You're going to die if you go up in the air, so you might as well have a fighting chance on the ground.

If the threat occurs in the air, when near an airport, fail the engine and then squawk the code. It is unlikely that the hijacker will know how to restart it and you can use the code as part of the restart checklist.

If all else fails, do what you can to avoid harming people on the ground. Remember, you're going to die anyway, so do what you need to do.
 
Brad Z said:
How do we know you're not a terrorist planning to hijack a GA airplane?
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I don't think sharing a photo of my temporary issuance would be wise on the internet.
 
TK211X said:
No, i'm not saying hi to my friend who's name is Jack.

This may be a touchy subject but I feel it has great importance for general discussion among GA Pilots. lets say for a given variety of a situation, You are an average aged pilot with a PPL. You take a passenger with you who you recently met, get up in the air, then trouble. (Seized controls or threats) Aside from the usual squawk code, what do YOU do? What about a threat on the ground to take you into the air?


I personally have heard a few things from pretending to fall ill to purposefully "failing" the engine to pretending to be a maintenance employee.




Small note, I have not found a thread like this so if one exists I don't mind moving it/deleting it.
Click to expand...
Fold your arms across your chest and tell him, "Good luck." Ten bucks once the airplane is in a 60 degree bank and getting worse he might reconsider his decision.
 
Has this ever happened in a plane with 6 seats or fewer? Over the course of 100+ years of aviation history it must have, but I've never heard of an instance.

Anyway no, this is not a scenario I ever really think about since the probability is zero that anyone I fly with would do something like that. But if they did I would go all Steven Seagal on their ass. :thumbsup:
 
I agree that on the ground, you don't let it get to the air, period. If you're already in the air, all bets are off. What you would do would just depend on the specific situation. I don't think there is a canned answer in that instance.
 
I have flown with a few people on this board.
Most have tried to kill me at some point in flight.

PitloTangoCharlie was the most blatant, opening the door and trying to shove me out of his Bo as we rotated.


For now, I would just pull the chute. We aren't going anywhere after that.
 
On the ground....apply downward pressure and bend mixture control in idle/cutoff position on your way out cabin. Nobody's going anywhere in plane.

In flight, release passenger seat belt, briskly apply forward pressure to flight controls. Hold on. Works best in open cockpit aircraft.
 
In the air: Crush his larynx. End of threat.

On the ground: Depends, but all choices end up with him on the ground in varying amounts of pain.
 
What I found strange is that except for 1 800 GA SECURE popping up here and there around the airport. During training there is little to no discussion on these situations other than the squawk code. Even my King ground course had almost nothing on it.

I guess as petrolero stated above it must really not be that prevalent to teach as much as runway incursions and a few other emphasized areas are.
 
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Oh there was this thing about taxing to the runway with flaps down but I thought that was a joke about not using the checklist.
 
TK211X said:
During training there is little to no discussion on these situations other than the squawk code. Even my King ground course had almost nothing on it.
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Frankly, good. It's something that's extremely relevant for folking pushing into airlines and charter ops, but it's a waste of time for sunday fliers with 160hp behind the fan. Not only are the odds of this happening vanishingly small, there's very little that could threaten others even if someone did hijack you. I figure the only reason the code is mentioned is not so that you can use it if you're hijacked, but so you understand the ramifications if you DID use it accidentally.

With all the risks that DO exist and aren't trained for sufficiently, it would be a terrible waste of training hours to focus on a hijacked 172 when people still don't handle base-to-final turns or departure engine failures correctly. For that matter, someone simply stealing your plane and using it as a weapon is probably far more likely than a hijacking, and yet lots of people still don't lock their planes or secure the keys.
 
If your worried screen your passengers,so that your comfortable. On the ground give up the keys. If they want you to fly it,the fun begins,you have nothing to loose.
 
Almost happened at my airport, the day I soloed. A guy robbed a bank, took hostages, stripped them to their underwear, zip tied them together, walked out to a minivan, and got the whole group inside. Forced a bank employee to drive while he shot at the cops through the car windows. The local TV chopper guy was filming the whole thing, just a couple miles from my house. This started early in the morning after he abandoned his car and walked to the bank - I probably drove by his car on my way to work.

The minivan then drove east, which happened to be where the local airport is, and where I was doing my PP training. Cops in full pursuit, and the van drove onto the airport property, the guy got out, grabbed a hostage, and ran to a 172 doing a runup. Then a lot of things happened all at once - he tried to open the left door, he let go of the hostage and she ran towards the tail, the CFI pulled the mixture and he and the student dove out the right door, and the cops opened fire.

The CFI still teaches (I just saw him last week), the airplane ended up with a lot of holes in it, and the dumbass survived all the holes he ended up with and is in prison.

The airport was closed most of the day, and as soon as it reopened I drove out and met my CFI. The ATIS said something like, "Shots fired in the vicinity." All the local news crews were filming their remotes with the airport in the background. That airplane in the pattern, over the shoulder of the reporter doing his remote? That was me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf4GQwc7f1I
 
PICK YOUR FRIENDS MORE WISELY!! Personally I wouldn't take a semi-stranger flying anyway...

Get some sleep... It's never going to happen...
 
Probably a more realistic thing to worry about than a hijacking is a suicide attempt. Either is pretty remote, but it's probably happened on a discovery flight.

I heard a story about a guy giving a discovery flight in a glider (I don't know if it's true or not, but there are enough glider guys out there who might know if it's urban legend). The pax opened the canopy and tried to jump. The pilot was in a bad spot - being in the back with a too-far back CG with an empty front seat, and no parachute. He put it into a steep turn, as many Gs as he could generate to help keep the guy in his seat, and got it onto the ground as quickly as he could.
 
frfly172 said:
If your worried screen your passengers,so that your comfortable. On the ground give up the keys. If they want you to fly it,the fun begins,you have nothing to loose.
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I guess I am just a little worried. I just figured with the amount of people who have mental problems and the recent Germenwings crash that it could easily happen to you. Being just newly certificated, I just didn't want to be ignorant and end up being a statistic.

By the way how do you screen your passengers? Is there a website in particular? Even then, as I mentioned above seemingly normal people can still have problems. Thats just my concern.
 
I had occasion to wonder recently if a person who suddenly expressed interest in going flying might be looking for a way to suicide without appearing to suicide. Strangely, I've been "busy" ever since.

As a rule, I don't take strangers or even recent aquaintences flying. But man, sometimes, people you've known for a while can surprise you. I don't think there are any absolute guarantees with anything.
 
Yeah, **** all those Lifeline and Angel Flight patients. They can find their own way to get where they are going.
 
There are people I've known for a long time that I wouldn't want to take flying, I wouldn't want to ride in a car with them either.

My biggest fear with someone that's in a small plane for the first time is a situation where the pax might panic and grab something that shouldn't be grabbed when we are close to the ground.

EdFred said:
Yeah, **** all those Lifeline and Angel Flight patients. They can find their own way to get where they are going.
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But they are screened, or at least known to the system somehow. I've flown on Angel Flights and never thought about it.
 
Matthew said:
There are people I've known for a long time that I wouldn't want to take flying, I wouldn't want to ride in a car with them either.

My biggest fear with someone that's in a small plane for the first time is a situation where the pax might panic and grab something that shouldn't be grabbed when we are close to the ground.



But they are screened, or at least known to the system somehow. I've flown on Angel Flights and never thought about it.
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All that's really known is they are sick, need a ride, and can't afford to get there. Or there was the lady and her mother Kelvin and I shuttled back from SC a few years ago. No one screened them.

Why is everyone so scared of everyone else? No ability to do, well, anything?
 
Matthew said:
Probably a more realistic thing to worry about than a hijacking is a suicide attempt. Either is pretty remote, but it's probably happened on a discovery flight.

I heard a story about a guy giving a discovery flight in a glider (I don't know if it's true or not, but there are enough glider guys out there who might know if it's urban legend). The pax opened the canopy and tried to jump. The pilot was in a bad spot - being in the back with a too-far back CG with an empty front seat, and no parachute. He put it into a steep turn, as many Gs as he could generate to help keep the guy in his seat, and got it onto the ground as quickly as he could.
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There are a couple of passenger jumps on this list: http://charlesorourke.com/articles/suicide-by-airplane but not one from a glider.
 
I once flew with a CFI who couldn't keep his hands off the controls. He claimed I didn't see a plane in the traffic the first time. The second time he had some other BS reason about how I was about to stall or something. This was early on in my flying career. I did consider squawking 7500 because it kind of felt like he was hijacking my flight... but in the end decided to tough it out and then make sure I never flew with him again. He was a recent Embry-Riddle graduate. I try not to jump to conclusions.
 
mryan75 said:
Fold your arms across your chest and tell him, "Good luck." Ten bucks once the airplane is in a 60 degree bank and getting worse he might reconsider his decision.
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In the air, this. No rube is landing my airplane successfully. On the ground, uncertain, though I expect my response would involve a great deal of running.
 
EdFred said:
Yeah, **** all those Lifeline and Angel Flight patients. They can find their own way to get where they are going.
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Well, since you put it that way. Yes.

An airplane is even more vulnerable than a car. At least in a car, I might be able to jump out at a light or something. There's not even a door on my side of the plane.
 
Mistake Not... said:
Well, since you put it that way. Yes.

An airplane is even more vulnerable than a car. At least in a car, I might be able to jump out at a light or something. There's not even a door on my side of the plane.
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Wow, this place really has turned into *******ville.
 
Matthew said:
Probably a more realistic thing to worry about than a hijacking is a suicide attempt. Either is pretty remote, but it's probably happened on a discovery flight.

I heard a story about a guy giving a discovery flight in a glider (I don't know if it's true or not, but there are enough glider guys out there who might know if it's urban legend). The pax opened the canopy and tried to jump. The pilot was in a bad spot - being in the back with a too-far back CG with an empty front seat, and no parachute. He put it into a steep turn, as many Gs as he could generate to help keep the guy in his seat, and got it onto the ground as quickly as he could.
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This happened near me several years ago:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-09-3300491086_x.htm
 
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