In the event of an airline hijacking, the aircraft could literally go into auto-pilot mode. It would almost be like a self-piloting plane, but the controls would be shifted to the air traffic controllers. The ATC would guide the plane to the nearest airport for an emergency landing. Alerts would be sent to the other planes to clear an entry for the descent. The terrorists would not be able to control the aircraft at all, thus disabling them from attacking buildings and other targets.
The only weak spot would be that terrorists could externally hack the ATC’s system and take control away from honest pilots and then manipulate the aircraft to crash into anything they wanted.
This is just something I thought about while taking a shower last evening. The flaw in the design is something I thought about moments ago. It’s possible that someone out there has come up with this idea already and is engineering it, or it’s being turned down by some boss. I don’t know, but I wanted to get this idea out there, even if I never got credit for it. Lives would be saved anyway.
