On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 21:57:56 -0700, "Ardna"
wrote:

The TSA or whoever after 9/11 imposed a rule on flights in and out of DCA
that no passenger may leave their seat until 30 minutes after takeoff and 30
minutes before landing. My question is simple, what if 6 people all stand up
at once on say , a 737. Are the two cabin crew members going to be able to
do anything about it ? And yes, some of you are going to reply with the fact
that there may be air marshals on the flight, but say there wasn't - what
could 2 cabin crew really do to stop 6 people at once ?


As others have pointed out, it will be much harder for anyone to storm the
cockpit, but the rule is meant to cause several things to happen, should it
be broken, and the pasenger(s) do not immediately sit down and buckle up.

Should this happen, it causes an immediate abort of the approach to DCA,
scrambling of intercept jets, and a diversion to a holding pattern, and
eventual diversion to some other airport. The local DC security level
automatically ratchets up a notch or so, until the extent of the infraction
can be reliably assessed.

Rules such as this are not designed to thwart would-be highjackers, they are
meant to dramatically reduce the number of incidents that could be
interpreted as the start of such an attempt. Same as with the FRZ and ADIZ
rules around Washington DC -- they are designed to reduce the "unknown
clutter" so that an actual threat can be recognized more swiftly and
accurately, and dealt with more expeditiously.