Summary
Passengers on an American Airlines flight from Milwaukee to Dallas-Fort Worth restrained a Canadian man with duct tape after he allegedly attempted to open a cabin door mid-flight, claiming he was the “captain” and needed to exit.
The man became aggressive, injuring a flight attendant as he rushed toward the door.
Several passengers, including Doug McCright and Charlie Boris, subdued him, using duct tape to secure his hands and ankles.
Authorities detained the man upon landing, and the incident remains under investigation.
So for future reference, especially for those of you who do such things recreationally, facedown restraint is very risky from a respiratory standpoint, especially with the limbs back in the hogtie position, that is how the cops kill people (I would say accidentally except they have enough education on the topic to preclude that). But ultimately I’m mostly just glad they kept him from opening the plane. That’s the obvious first priority there. Damn.
It’s physically impossible to open a door on an airplane during most stages of the flight. The door first needs to move inward before opening, and the pressure differential is absurd. The handle would break long before you’d open the door. The only time it’s really possible is near the ground as you’re coming in to land or taking off (which did happen recently).
I’m going to trust that you’re correct.
But I’m still going to duct tape the psychopath for everyone’s safety, including the psychopath.
You would ideally keep their hands restrained in front of them but if they’re too dextrous to allow that you want to at least keep them on their side. That said, not a level of understanding I typically expect from laypeople (vs, for instance, trained police officers).
Boeing aircraft have this safety feature where it fucking immediately falls off so you can always get out if you are the Captain and need to escape from the bad duct tape wielders.
That’s not true on every plane.
Typically for doors that don’t open inward first, they have interlocks.
For example, the over wing doors on a 737ng don’t open inward, they are actually spring loaded on a hinge and swing directly outward, there is a locking pawl that engages and disengages automatically under specific circumstances, requiring the squat switches on the landing gear to be engaged and the throttles to be in an idle position.
Opening the door during flight is attempted murder of everyone on board, fuck him. I hope it was hard to breathe the whole time and they put him in a nice padded cell for a while.
Considering he was claiming to be the captain and trying to get off the plane it seems highly likely he was having some kind of mental breakdown. He needs proper medical care and a psychological evaluation, not summary execution. Yes he was a danger to himself and others, but that doesn’t mean he’s guilty of attempted murder. A padded room might be appropriate depending on the psych evaluation, but wishing suffering on him without knowing the full situation is too much.
Well, call me stupid, but execution in general is not good.
And summary execution is even worse!
Found the cop.
Username checks out
They probably were going through some kind of mania or hallucination episode.
Don’t always assume the worst in people, “eye for an eye” has never worked.
“Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” is the more accurate version I think
This saying is a pet peeve of mine, because it’s so contrary to the actual meaning of “eye for an eye”, which is a prohibition against escalation. Like in this case the guy injured someone’s neck and wrist, so the maximum punishment would be injuring his neck and wrist, not killing him. That’s not to say “eye for an eye” is an ideal justice system, just that it is opposed to wanton revenge and violence.
I like that saying, I’ll be reusing it.
It’s the original saying 😭
Uh, no? “An eye for an eye.” is old school ancient.
It was however a limiting statement. When Hammurabi made “an eye for an eye” into law, it meant you couldn’t just go kill a man’s entire family over losing an eye and call it justified.
Fair enough. I’ve honestly only ever heard the other.
Where the counter comes from doesn’t preclude this, but is an evolution of it. If the law says your family takes their eye in revenge for them taking yours, then they take revenge for what you did, etc. It creates a potential for a cycle of vengeance. It’s better than nothing probably, but it also has serious flaws.
not at all https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_eye
“eye for an eye” is about 4’000 years old
the above saying is an american idiom coined in 1914
In most airplanes, it’s impossible to open the doors while the plane is in the air due to air pressure keeping them in place.
That doesn’t give anyone a pass to try and open it.
No, but it does mean that calling it attempted murder is a bit strong. They were trying to do something that’s physically impossible for them to do. It’d be like calling it attempted murder if I went up to someone and tried to use my psychic powers to explode their heart.
Did you not read the article and read about the assault against the flight attendant?
Did you not read the comments I was responding to? They were specifically about opening the door.
Intent is the key, if the person had a gun they thought was loaded but actually wasn’t, wouldn’t it still be attempted murder if they put it to your head and pulled the trigger? Same thing with the door, they thought it would open.
So if I genuinely believe I can use my psychic powers to explode peoples’ hearts, I should be up on attempted murder charges whenever I glare at someone with intent to kill?
Given that in a basically identical case someone linked to elsewhere in this thread no murder-related charges were filed for trying to open an airplane door like this, I suspect that wouldn’t be the outcome here either.
It’s an attempt to harm, and you will be prosecuted for it.
A federal grand jury returned an indictment today charging an alleged unruly passenger onboard an American Airlines flight after engaging in disruptive and life-threatening behavior, including attempting to open the aircraft exterior doors mid-flight.
I am specifically addressing the comment:
It is not attempted murder. The case you link to backs me up:
Why no attempted murder charge, if it’s attempted murder?
Ok well, im not going to argue over nonsense with you.
Because you don’t have an argument.
Maybe try to reason about why an insane person might do that instead of assuming that everybody is evil?
Feel free to reason it out with someone on your next flight as they do everything described in the article. Have fun.
That’s not how plane doors work.
Yes it is. Unless they’re under like 5,000 feet there’s hundreds of pounds of pressure holding the door closed.
Just looked it up, it’s over 20,000 lbs of force required to open the door when pressurized.
Gilgamesh could easily open that
The handle will rip off the door before it gets anywhere close to opening.
YOU DOUBT THE MIGHT OF GILGAMESH???
It’s why plane doors open inwards before they open outwards. The air pressure means the door cannot possibly open inwards when at altitude.
This is very calming to hear & I feel like it needs to be mentioned lots more when we hear about these incidents! no sarcasm, it’s honestly good to think it’s not so easy
I mean, it’s an attempt, but it’s in no way possible to actually do. That’s thousands of pounds of pressure on that door. I’d bet on the handle breaking off before the door opens mid-flight.