I have flown with duct tape and zip ties since the seventies. Haven't had to use them yet, fortunately. But I've trained on planes for years, just in case.
I'll tell you a story, that was in Time Magazine, about my friend Bobby Hayden. May he rest in peace...
Him and his wife of forty years, Katie, were flying back to Massachusetts from California. As he always did, he quietly informed a flight attendant that he was a police officer, and that if the crew needed any assistance, to give him a signal.
Mid flight, two lunatics get up, start screaming "the plane is going to crash", and start ripping open the overhead storage compartments and start throwing bags into the aisle.
The flight attendant signals Bobby, who calmly gets up, knocks out the closest guy with a left hook from hell, grabs the second guy, picks him up and drops him on his head, knocking him out cold as well. Then he and the other passengers tie them up with people's neck ties and belts from their pants, gag them and drag them to the back of the plane.
The passengers go nuts, cheering and applauding. The whole time Katie is reading a novel, and doesn't even look up. A guy beside her, who's applauding wildly, says to her, "I can't believe you didn't even stop reading!"
Katie still doesn't look up. She says, "Yeah, well, he's been doing this stuff his whole life, I've never read this book before."
I read that article every year and still laugh.
