Posted here at 11:21 PM Central ********************************

'Everybody's Business' - Pilots, Flight Crews Say They Rely on Passengers to Stop Trouble

By Brandon Loomis Associated Press Writer Published: Oct 9, 2001

CHICAGO (AP) - Airline crews said Tuesday that after the terrorist attacks, they are counting on passengers to help protect them - the way they did when they tackled a deranged man who broke into a cockpit this week. "We used to have a saying at the Air Force that security is everybody's business," said Herb Hunter, a United pilot and spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association. "That could never be more true than it is right now."

Airline security has been a top concern since the suicide hijackings Sept. 11. Airports and airlines have increased security measures, but there were some tense moments Monday aboard an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Chicago.

Passengers said Edward Coburn, 31, of Fresno, Calif., ran to the cockpit and knocked open the door while screaming that the plane was going to hit the Sears Tower. He was restrained by a gang of passengers and two pilots, and the plane with 162 people aboard landed safely. Coburn was jailed on charges of interfering with a flight crew.

While some caution that it may be dangerous for passengers to get involved, passengers said they were grateful for the quick action.

"I loved what I saw," said JoAnn Rockman of Flossmoor, Ill., who watched her fellow passengers subdue Coburn. "The stewardess yelled, 'Get that guy!' and half the plane got up."

On the same flight Tuesday - with a different crew - passengers again were called into action after a passenger became intoxicated and unruly, striking a male flight attendant, FBI spokesman Ross Rice said. Kevin David Houghton, 31, of Melbourne, Australia, was forced back into his seat and several passengers were enlisted to help guard him until the plane landed in Chicago, Rice said.

Houghton was arrested at the airport and will be charged Wednesday with interfering with a flight crew, Rice said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said the agency has no policy on what passengers should do if someone threatens a flight, but recommends they look to pilots and flight attendants for guidance.

Passengers at first thought Coburn might be a terrorist. His father later told authorities that his son had failed to take his medication for his mental illness. There were no sky marshals on the flight.

Jeff Jack, spokesman for the Association of Flight Attendants, said passengers can continue to expect flight crews to ask for help.

"That passengers are getting involved when there's a security risk on a plane right now is almost a foregone conclusion," Jack said. "Can you imagine sitting on a plane when someone goes crazy and not doing anything?"

The FAA and airlines are discussing self-defense training for flight attendants and whether it should include enlisting passenger help, he said.

Kent Spence, a lawyer from Jackson, Wyo., warned against relying on passengers too much. He noted the case of a 19-year-old Las Vegas man who suffocated during a melee on a Southwest Airlines flight last year. Authorities said the death was the result of self-defense.

Rockman said people on Monday's flight "were ready to fight to the death."

"Americans saw what happened" on Sept. 11, she said. "We learn our lessons and we will never allow that to happen again."

---

On the Net:

FAA: http://www.faa.gov/main.htm

Pilots union: http://www.alpa.org

AP-ES-10-09-01 2322EDT

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

Answers

Saw some of the passengers talkign about this on the news. You might have thought they would be jubilant--they weren't. They were real sober and matter of fact about what they saw and did.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

Afte the Twin Towers 9-11 attack, people have come together more as a unit and I belive this is what we are seeing more and more. "We the people..." as opposed to the "what are you going to do for me" attitude, is coming to the fore.

5:50 AM Central Wensday

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

736amest

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0110100374oct10.colu mn?coll=chi%2Dhomepagenews%2Dutl

From the Chicago Tribune

Responses in face of fear continue to be amazing

John Kass

October 10, 2001

A month ago, a nervous flight attendant shouting, "Get that guy!" would have been met with a peculiar reaction:

Many people would have averted their eyes, or pretended not to hear, studiously unaware, uninvolved.

It's probably not fashionable to admit it. And I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

We like confrontation in our movies, in our games, in our politics, but not in our lives, especially in a confined space like an airplane.

There was always the belief that if you didn't get involved, if you got small in your seat, quiet and still and tried to disappear, you might stay safe.

"But all that's changed now, hasn't it?" JoAnn Rockman of Flossmoor told me Tuesday over the phone. "Before Sept. 11, people would have avoided the whole thing, the whole confrontation. [But Monday] the flight attendant said, `Hey, get that guy!' and half the plane got up and leapt to their feet and jumped on the man. That's what amazed me. There were so many people jumping up to help.

"It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. It's up to us to help save our own lives. The passengers feel empowered, and we'll all get up if we have to. Americans will never be on a plane and be led to slaughter again."

Rockman, her husband, Howard, and their son Maxwell, a high school freshman, were all on American Airlines Flight 1238 Monday afternoon.

On that flight to Chicago from Los Angeles, a large, mentally ill man went into a frenzy and stormed the cockpit. As passengers jumped on the man, the flight crew notified authorities. Two fighter jets were sent up into the air ready to shoot the plane down. But it turned out the enraged man wasn't a terrorist, he was subdued and the flight landed at O'Hare International Airport.

Predictably, he's now identified by all three of his names--Edward Alexander Coburn, 31, of Fresno, Calif.

Coburn was held without bail. His father, Stephen Coburn, a sad, gray-faced man in a blue suit and tie, said he recently had been dealing with his son's erratic behavior.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley--fresh from offering heroism awards to Chicago firefighters and police officers, though he hasn't yet given them a contract--decided to dispense some wisdom.

"If you control the cockpit," Daley explained, "you control the destiny of the plane."

And then Daley, who of all people should know better than to offer knee-jerk criticism of parents for the erratic behavior of their sons, began heaping some righteous indignation on Stephen Coburn.

"There has to be responsibility of that parent," Daley huffed. "Where was he? That is a valid question. ... You should be outraged by the father. He should have said, `My son has not taken medicine' ... Someone should be held accountable for the costs."

There is something wrong with Edward Alexander Coburn. His father, who had notified a flight attendant that his son was ill, was trying to bring him home while following doctor's orders.

Parents always bear some responsibility for their children. But I kept thinking of that father's face, the pain in it, especially when Daley was angrily ripping on that poor man.

A few years ago, Mr. Mayor, you might remember another father's pain.

His teenage son threw an unsupervised beer party at the family's Michigan summer home. There was a vicious bat-wielding brawl. One kid brandished a shotgun. A teenager got his head cracked open.

Chicago offered that sorrowful father a city's sympathy and kindness. We all did because it was the right thing to do.

JoAnn Rockman had the grace to offer sympathy to Stephen Coburn. And she was on that plane, along with her husband and son.

"I was so proud of how the people reacted to the flight attendant, but at the same time, I felt so sorry for that man's father. My heart goes out to that man. He looked so, so very sad," she said.

"He said he just learned his son was ill. And here, his son is causing a disturbance, his son is being restrained by strangers, and he didn't know if anyone would take out their aggressions on his kid. And no one did."

What's amazing isn't that Americans joined together to face a threat. Even on an airplane. We've been confronting threats, every generation or so, since this nation began.

What is amazing, though, is that through the fear, and the proper response to a threat, Americans held on to their grace.

They held on to their humanity.

"It would have been easy for all the men who stopped him to have taken their frustrations out on him," Rockman said. "But they didn't. No one took a swing at him out of vengeance or fear. We didn't. That's what amazes me. Thank God we're civilized. We take care of the threats, of the bullies, but take no pleasure in it."

Almost every day, since Sept. 11, we amaze ourselves.

-----------

jskass@tribune.com

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

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Flight crews don't feel attack-ready

October 10, 2001

BY ROBERT C. HERGUTH AND SABRINA WALTERS STAFF REPORTERS

Nearly a month after the deadly terrorist hijackings, and a day after a mentally ill man burst into a jetliner cockpit, flight attendants and pilots say they remain ill-prepared to deal with serious disturbances on commercial aircraft.

There has been little if any formal training for flight crews since Sept. 11--an unsettling fact for many working in the skies, especially flight attendants. No longer can they rely on assistance from pilots, who are supposed to remain locked behind cockpit doors.

"Right now, today, you have to rely on your own personal resources or those the [pilot] gives you," said Bobbie Pilkington, secretary-treasurer of the United Airlines master executive council of Association of Flight Attendants. "There's no training. There's no floor. There's nothing you can reach into your bag of training tricks and pull out.

"Pilots are having briefings with flight attendants before each trip and basically creating their own guidelines on how to protect the cockpit."

Some of the ideas: tossing blankets over hijackers or unruly passengers; throwing scalding coffee and water, rolling food carts in front of cockpit doors. Flight attendants and pilots interviewed Tuesday said enlisting the help of travelers also is essential, as shown when Edward Coburn allegedly rushed the cockpit of an O'Hare-bound American Airlines jet Monday and was subdued by passengers.

A confidential document just for pilots also details various methods for preventing the takeover of an aircraft, one aviation source said.

But being told what to do is different from undergoing extensive training, some in the industry say.

"To my knowledge there's no official formal training other than being told under no circumstances to let anyone in the cockpit," said Herb Hunter, a United pilot and spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association. "We need to have a formal training program that addresses the threat as it is now."

The flight attendants union has recommended security and training measures as part of task forces convened after Sept. 11, but the federal government has yet to act. "We believe we need updated hijacking training, self-defense training. If they're going to put nonlethal weapons on the aircraft, we need to be certified," Pilkington said. Another veteran United flight attendant suggested martial arts lessons be made available.

American spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan, however, said any such measures could only come after the feds decide how to proceed. United spokesman Joe Hopkins said hijackings are covered in the "initial training" of flight attendants, and said increased security at airports and the expansion of the sky marshal program should address many concerns.

Cockpit doors also are being reinforced and new locks are being installed, officials said.

A number of new procedures--some improvised--have been put in place as well.

Flight attendants on at least some airlines must phone into the cockpit before trying to enter to, say, deliver dinner, and the call often is followed by a special knock, several officials said. Fewer cockpit door keys are handed out. And pilots immediately alert air traffic controllers when there's a hint of trouble, which could be followed by F-16s being dispatched.

Fighters escorted the American flight Monday, and they roared across the Chicago area Tuesday conducting exercises, officials said.

At O'Hare, American pilot Ken Moore compared his job with a dangerous military mission. "I flew Navy aircraft, tactical jets, and this is nothing compared to that," he said of the new threats.

His airline's chief pilot issued a memo this week urging pilots to be sensitive when making announcements on in-flight public address systems. "At this point, we simply can't be individually making up security procedures," he wrote. "To regain the confidence of the passenger, we cannot scare or intimidate them with PA's, such as those containing instructions about subduing suspicious passengers."

But when push comes to shove, air crews are encouraged to rally passengers during emergencies. And they now are more likely to find plenty of volunteers.

"We used to have a saying at the Air Force that security is everybody's business," Hunter said. "That could never be more true than it is right now."

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

As someone on TB2k pointed out - years of training the people to be sheeples right out the window.

I think people are more aware of having to take responsibility for their lives and those around them. They have to be involved - it is not someone else's responsibility - it is theirs.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

beckie,

I resemble that remark... LOL ;)

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

10:20 AM central

So true Beckie.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

The least the grateful crew could do would be to provide a fresh set of underwear to all the participants.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001