Rich Lowry, over at The Corner, says that a pilot performing violent maneuvers to thwart hijackers would result in massive liability suits because it "could conceivably cause some sort of actionable injury to everyone on the plane."

Well, no. Not that I think that this is a great anti-hijacking strategy, but only the ones who are not in their seats, or who ignore the standard pre-flight instructions to wear your belt while seated, would be injured. It's rare for a belted passenger to be injured due to turbulence or sudden maneuvers in an aircraft.

Well, no, right back to you. Also injured will be passengers out of their seats trying to subdue the hijackers.

Which is the real defense now, as many have pointed out. Despite all the idoicy Underperformin' Norman and his brain dead clones inflict on the flying public, any Islamikaze or anyone else trying to interfere with the aircrew is going to be buried beneath an avalanche of irate grannies, furious soccer moms, and laptop wielding business flyers outraged as having to spend more time aboard the plane than scheduled. Any air marshals who may coincidentally be aboard will be more concerned with extracting the hapless would be martyr than subduing him.

So a pilot trying high-G maneuvers (and out of curiosity, how much can you stress a commercial airliner before the wings go their own way?) is really going to be hindering the subjugation of the next gang of Jihad Junkies.

And anyway, there are lots of valid reasons to be out of your seat anyway, like using the lavatory. Despite the cheap laugh one of the Airport movies tried to extract from that idea (I think it was the one where George Kennedy was flying a Concorde) a jury would probably be sympathetic to a plaintiff concussed by the fixtures. Or better yet, imagine a nursing mother weeping as she describes how her baby was plucked from her breast during an Immelmann turn.

Granted, having a planeload of lawsuit filing survivors might be better than having a smoking hole in the ground surrounded by lawsuit filing next of kin.

I wasn't disputing that this is a lousy way to thwart a hijacking, or that there would be injuries. I was simply disputing the statement that *everyone* in the plane would be injured.