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American Morning
Man Accused of Trying to Storm Cockpit of United Flight Will Be in Court Today
Aired February 08, 2002 - 07:05 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Up front this morning, high drama in the sky. The man accused of trying to storm the cockpit of a United Airlines flight will be in court later today. 28-year-old Pablo Moreira was subdued by the co-pilot, who hit him on the head with an axe. He is now in FBI custody in Miami after being flown back from Buenos Aires. And in just a few hours, Moreira will be face to face with a federal judge.
Gary Tuchman joins us now from outside FBI headquarters in Miami with the very latest -- good morning, Gary.
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Paula, good morning to you.
The man who allegedly delivered kung fu style kicks to a United Airlines cockpit door, breaking the bottom of the door, sticking his head through the door and then getting it hit with a co-pilot's axe, is now under arrest in south Florida. Here at FBI headquarters in North Miami Beach, Florida, Pablo Moreira, 28 years old, from Montevideo, Uruguay, was brought at five o'clock Eastern time this morning.
No visible signs, from our vantage point, of axe wounds to his head, but we were kept far away. About three minutes ago, he left FBI headquarters for a ride to Jackson Memorial Hospital here in Miami, where he will be checked out before he goes to court this afternoon. He is charged with interfering with a flight crew. He will have a first appearance before a federal magistrate judge, where it's expected he'll be asked if he has an attorney. If he doesn't, one will be given to him.
It's not clear why he did this. Some passengers say they think he was drunk. What is clear is he is in a lot of trouble -- Paula, back to you.
ZAHN: Gary, as best you can describe to us what happened, I know that you have seen the accounts of eyewitnesses and the pilot. What exactly happened?
TUCHMAN: Well, what we're being told is this man said he wanted to talk to the captain. Most of the passengers on this flight, and it's a 4,400 mile flight, nine hours from Miami to Buenos Aires, were sleeping. It was 4:30 in the morning, five hours after they took off. They started waking up when they heard him kicking the cockpit door. We are now being told by some passengers that before the flight he was drinking heavily in the airport and that he was drinking on the plane. Another passenger says he was smoking in the airport, which is unusual because you're not allowed to smoke in Miami International Airport. He was told to put out the cigarette, he would not.
His brother in South America says that his brother is a nervous flier. He didn't like turbulence. And the allegation, the inference there is that he wanted to tell the pilot to fly more carefully. However, obviously the way the man approached this is rather unusual and has left him in a great deal of trouble.
ZAHN: Yes, he could be paying the price for that for a long time to come.
Gary Tuchman, thanks for the update.
There were some very scary moments, of course, for the plane's passengers and crew. Just how exactly did the suspect manage to force his way into the cockpit of United Flight 855?
Well, the man sitting right next to Pablo Moreira offers his eyewitness account of what happened.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAN BOYER, PASSENGER ON FLIGHT 855: And I asked him what he was doing and he said he wanted to talk to the captain. And before I knew it, he had inserted himself into the cockpit through the lower part of the door, which was, you know, had been kicked in by him. So we all jumped on top of him, several of the crew members and passengers actually, three of us, and we were restraining him.
We didn't see what was going on but we found out later what was going on on the other side of the cockpit door, which is basically the actions of the co-pilot with the axe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: That leads us to our big question this morning -- what can pilots do to protect themselves? Do pilots need guns?
Well, Sam Ward is a former commercial airline pilot and he joins us now from Tombull (ph), Texas near Houston, from the cockpit of a corporate jet.
Good morning, Sam. Good to have you with us, sir.
SAM WARD, FORMER AIRLINE PILOT: Good morning, Paula. Good morning, Paula. It's a pleasure to be here.
ZAHN: Let's talk a little bit about the use of -- we're delighted to have you with us. Let's talk a little bit about this crash axe that was used. Do all commercial airlines -- airliners have them?
WARD: Oh, yes they do, Paula. I'm sitting in the co-pilot's seat here and the crash axe is normally kept behind the seat. I've reached back and gotten this one here, which is not exactly the type that they used on the 777, the United 777 that was involved in the incident, but it's very similar. It's about this size here. It's just hand sized. It's for crashes, of course. It's not meant to be used for self-defense and normally the co-pilot in a crash landing would take this crash axe and a fire extinguisher and he'd go out the door and he'd assist passengers away from the airplane and rescue people if he needed to using the crash axe.
In this case, obviously he had to defend himself with it. It's the only thing close to a weapon in the cockpit, this and the fire extinguisher, perhaps, and he if hit the guy with the flat side of it like this, then he could probably render him unconscious without doing too much damage. Obviously, if you hit him with this side, it would pretty much be all over. So he didn't want to do that.
ZAHN: Sam, though, there are some other options available to pilots, are there not? There's this sequence I know that you have rehearsed before called unloading an airplane. If that had been necessary, what would it have entailed?
WARD: OK, unloading the aircraft is a maneuver designed to disable perhaps a terrorist or a hijacker in the back of the airplane. If somebody is about to get through the cockpit door, and we've just seen yesterday that that's possible, to get through these doors, still. Even though the FAA and the airlines have done a great job of putting the extra security on the doors, still, I think, we've got a ways to go before they're completely secure.
But if somebody is about to enter the cockpit then one of the ways to prevent them from doing this is a maneuver called unloading that was designed by Don Rawley (ph) of the Texas Air Aces. And it involves putting the passenger or the terrorist up against the ceiling and then abruptly dropping him to the floor. Very simply, if you had the controls in your hands like this, it's about a three second maneuver. You'd just ease forward on the stick to pull some negative G and then come right back on the stick like that and it would drop to the floor.
It's quite dramatic. We've tried it in this airplane, in this Citation, with a dummy and you can see quite clearly that it could do some damage.
ZAHN: Yes, it surely got the dummy's attention.
WARD: Obviously the down side of this -- I'm sorry?
ZAHN: Sam, I just want to move you onto the whole debate over guns.
WARD: OK.
ZAHN: There is an agreement, I guess, among the pilot unions to arm pilots with stun guns. Is that going far enough, as far as you're concerned? WARD: Well, I think United, as far as I've heard, is the only ones who've done that. And a stun gun I don't really believe would be that much use in a cockpit. Now, that's what they decided to do and at least they're doing something.
I think you ought to have, weaponize the cockpit. This is the last line of defense. If somebody comes through that cockpit door, which they did yesterday, and the first officer had to fight him off with a fire axe, I'd rather not have to use hand to hand combat against a terrorist. They're probably better at it and if that man had overpowered the first officer, there would have been a disaster in the making there.
So if you're going to have to defend the cockpit, which obviously you are, you need some kind of a weapon up here to do it with. I think that the defenses ought to be layered. We ought to start with obviously the cockpit door, perhaps a security camera that we can see what's going on in the back. The unload maneuver, if they're trying to come through the cockpit door and if they make it through the cockpit door, a weapon to neutralize them.
ZAHN: All right, Sam Ward, we appreciate your spending some time with us this morning and it appears as though 75 percent of the American public now, in the latest poll, supports the idea of pilots arming themselves.
Again, thank you for joining us this morning, sir.
WARD: Thank you, Paula. It's a pleasure to be here.
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