All the gear and no idea
Now you can worry about infa red, night vision, laser aiming and all that malarkey but the most essential bit of kit for successfully taking a plane by storm is your trusty… step ladder. Yes, that’s right, the humble step ladder is the saviour of all the passengers on a hijacked plane. This seemed to come as something of a shock to many of the teams as armed with a variety of ladders we set about figuring out how to open the various types of doors.
Now in normal use, most planes have four doors, two at the front and two at the back which can be opened from the inside or outside by swinging the lever out, up and round which releases the door locks. A modern jet is basically a pressurised tube and the door when closed fits into the inside of the door frame where the higher pressure inside the plane holds it shut. Trying to open one of these babies from the outside is tough enough even if you have a gantry to stand on but we had nothing more than a set of step ladders.
What Alpha Team soon learnt in just opening the door is that one team member has to operate the lever and push the door in far enough for another team member lower down to grab the bottom of the door and swing it around and out of the way… Doing this quickly and in unison takes plenty of practice until a team can get the door open and all pile into the plane in under 7 seconds without clouting themselves with the door or knocking each other off the ladder…
Ati's Andrzej Bania strikes his best Crouching Tiger pose before manfully chipping a fingernailMeanwhile, Charlie Team were practising a wing assault. This is different in that you clamber quietly onto the wing, and crawl up to one of the two escape hatches mounted there. Once everyone is in place the number one man stands up and literally punches the door into the plane then he stands back as the rest of the team pile in before following in himself.
Up at the front of the plane, Bravo Team are trying a different method, screaming in on the top of a Landrover and using that a as a platform to wrench open the forward door and gain entry that way. This has presents a problem in that having the Landy too close to the plane means you fall off backwards as the door swings around… again, practice is the key…
And inside, working their way down the middle of the plane is Delta Team, who are learning that just busting in an blasting everything is a sure way to get passengers killed and get killed yourself. Though it has to be said that watching a bunch of fully grown men in Black Ops kit and respirators holding out guns and shouting ‘Bang’ is really rather amusing.