Plane hijacking

Audiences: 16-adult

Purpose: To question security systems around the world, and what they could have done to asses the situation.

According to Yahoo News Canada, a young man wielding a gun managed to sneak past Canjet airline security in Montego Bay, Jamaica on Monday hijacked a plane. While 159 passengers and two crew members were able to escape in exchange for money, 6 flight attendants remained in the plane as they anxiously awaited for the members of a Jamaican counter-terrorism squad to disarm the gunman. Although all passengers and flight attendants made it through safely, many questions have been risen after the hijacking.

The first one that comes to mind is how the heck did the Montego Bay's airline security system miss this man in the first? Wouldn't their detectors pick up the gun in his pocket at least? Not to mention he was described as being "mentally challenged." One would assume that airlines all over the world would tighten their security after 9/11 incident which had been drilled into every ones' brains for the past few years. If they couldn't even track down one man, then what are the chances of them preventing a squad of terrorist from invading another plane? CanJet is working work with officials in Jamaica to investigate on how the gunman was able to break through security.

The second thought that came to mind was the response of the passengers and flight attendants in addition to the hijacking. There was one man who was quite young, not to mention "mentally challenged" against 182 people. The question is, why would all those people submit to one idiotic thug? It's natural for them to scared in that situation, but if it wasn't like their were twenty other hijackers with firearms; there was only one. They could have somehow all teamed together and grab his gun and shoot him. Maybe not as dramatically as that, but they could have done something along those lines as to distract him somehow. What about Ms. C? She had a gun pointed directly at her and she still managed to defend herself. That was one person. Image what 182 people could have done in the same situation. It's the whole bystander effect that makes people roll over and submit.