WI: 9/11 in New York turns into a "Miracle on the Hudson" scenario

While not technically being ASB it does seem that with this premise you are asking too much. All 4 planes rescued by the passengers AND a successful Hudson landing? Your swinging for the fences and hoping for the Grand Slam when a hit down the line is far more appropriate.

For instance, if you had stuck to "The Passengers of Flight 93 overcome the Hijackers" it would be much more realistic.
 
Passengers have rarely fought against well organized Hikackings of planes in history. Those who have usually died in the hands of the hijackers. There is no reason for the passengers fighting, as long as the goals and motives of the hijackers are not clear.
 
Assume that somehow the suspicion of hijackers doing what the September 11 killers did had been passed on to aircrew. I can imagine one way, during a fight for control, a surviving co pilot deciding that putting down i nthe water is the least dangerous thing to do
 
Well, let's move our PoD back a bit. Let's say that instead of Zachy Mousalli (or however you say his name) getting picked up, you get two random pickups from the other flights.

Now, I'll go ahead and suggest something else not quite ASB-ish: One or more of the passengers figure out that something is wrong (maybe the order of attacks gets shuffled because of some dispatching headaches, and the Pentagon gets hit first). If I may be so blunt, it seems at least possible that someone onboard might have a decent "blunt instrument" (baseball bat, cane, tire iron, etc.) to combine with a cockpit rush to simply start whaling on the attackers (and it really only takes one well-placed whack from a baseball bat to severely injure someone...in a lot of cases, it's harder to not do severe-and-lasting harm with such a strike than to do it). Yes, someone would likely get severely injured or killed in the process, but it's possible that they could overwhelm them.

I think the biggest problem is avoiding a "hijacker ditch" before the passengers can get control back: The passengers incapacitate one or two of the 4-5 onboard, and the remaining 1-2 decide to simply smash into the nearest visible target that they can rather than lose control of things.

So even if Mohammed Atta and his buddies get beaten to a bloody pulp by a couple of lucky passengers, a large part of the problem is getting control back before they just crash the plane.

By the way, have there ever been substantial (albeit unsuccessful) attempts to talk an untrained pilot down?
 
The Pentagon explosion was mistaken in the beginning for a bomb.
I actually did not recall that. Mind you, we were watching things in biology (yeah, I was in 9th grade at the time), but my class was actually busier arguing over whodunit in New York than anything to actually grab the chatter on the Pentagon.
 
I actually did not recall that. Mind you, we were watching things in biology (yeah, I was in 9th grade at the time), but my class was actually busier arguing over whodunit in New York than anything to actually grab the chatter on the Pentagon.
I was in a preschool 20 minutes from the pentagon, before I koved.
 
By the way, have there ever been substantial (albeit unsuccessful) attempts to talk an untrained pilot down?

No, there have simulations and training exercises concerning the possibilit, (which have had mixed results.) but the situation has never even occured.
 
No, there have simulations and training exercises concerning the possibilit, (which have had mixed results.) but the situation has never even occured.
I'd be willing to consider it plausible that a talk-down could happen. One thing you might get, honestly, would be some attempt to burn as much fuel as possible (to reduce the risk of a massively fiery crash). You'd need a lot of luck, but I'll consider some sort of talk-down plausible if you can get there. Not likely, but maybe a 5% shot if you can get there.
 
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