Yes, but will you be playing songs from your Husker Du collection?

After several pages, I don't see anything that says the risk is zero.

So we're basically talking about the opinion of a second-generation pilot...sort of like Cliff Claven on steroids.

If one googles "box cutter 9/11", one immediately gets an article from Slate magazine saying that we don't really know if box cutters were actually used!

Yes, google is a great source of information.

Did you learn to fly using Google?

Was is really necessary to name the brand of soda you were sipping?

Don't you think our world is saturated enough with advertising? Why are you ruining your column with this?

Does salon have editors?

I would be more interested in the opinion of a chemist or mechanical engineer...

Which is hilarious, because my last comment contained a line about your chronic inability to google your acid fantasies, and actually find the opinion of a chemist or mechanical engineer on this subject. Both sorts of people have written on this topic.

But, never fear, I've done it for you. "The feasibility of an acid attack on a commercial airliner" is ZERO.

that depict people with little or no flying experience landing planes. One I remember:

In 1971 (?), I remember seeing the television movie "Terror in the Sky" starring Doug McClure and Roddy McDowall. A charter flight with some 40 passengers aboard takes off from Minneapolis bound for Seattle. During the flight, several passengers (and both pilots) become ill with food poisoning. A doctor (McDowall) and an ex-Army helicopter pilot (McClure) go forward to see what they can do.

Seattle is advised of the emergency, and they locate a retired airline pilot who has experience on this particular type of plane (it looks like a DC-6). Suffice it to say that the retired pilot talks a scared but determined McClure down to a safe landing.

Pretty improbable, huh? A man with no fixed-wing, multi-engine experience landing a DC-6?

Hell, that's entertainment!

I have held a private pilot's license for more than twenty years. I have landed my own (personally owned) airplane (a Cessna R172 -Hawk XP) a couple of thousand times, if you count touch-and-go's.

I would say my chances of landing a jet successfully would be nil.

It happens too fast. I have no trouble landing an a single engine fixed gear airplane that stalls at a speed of 55-60 mph - and whose engines responds instantaneously when you hit the throttle (that's what you do when you realize you were too high when you flared)

Landing jet at three times the speed, no practice, a much different perspective (in the Hawk XP you're maybe ten feet about the runway when you touch down - a 737? Maybe 30? It takes some practice to know when the wheels are going to touch in a 172 - the idea is you kill the power, and the aircraft stalls (stops flying) just as it sinks to the runway. If you get it wrong you add power, and try again. In a jet it takes too long to add power, and your splatter the airplane all over the runway. Or, maybe, you killed the power much too soon, and the stall means the nose drops, and hits the runway - anyway, you should get the idea.

Mythbusters puts out programs that draw audiences - cash pays the rent, you know. It wouldn't get sponsors if they crashed all the time, would they? My suggestion - take a flying lesson. See how fast the ground comes up when you land at 60 mph.

Then extrapolate how much faster it would come up at 150mph. Then add in whether you can go through the sequence of cutting power, flaring, adding power - all with no experience. Lots of luck, as they say

"...The whole point of the Mythbusters exercise was to determine if it was possible that a non-pilot could land a passenger aircraft, and indeed it was shown to be quite possible..."

I saw the show. The scenario was unrealistic and contrived, and if I remember right the simulator was a generic "jet" and not an actual, fully realistic airliner sim. My argument isn't that a person cannot perform a survivable landing in a controlled situation while a training pilot sits behind him, explaining what to do.

I am saying that a nonpilot, with no prior training could not, ever, take over during flight from, say, an incapacitated pilot, and land the thing merely with instructions from air traffic control. If I had the resources, I could easily demonstrate this in any full-motion simulator. "Here we are at 33,000 feet. The pilots are dead. Ready, go."

Try it a million times, and you will have a million crashes. I doubt that one in a hundred people could figure out how to work the communications radios, let alone get the thing on the ground.

Patrick Smith

The general question was about the feasibility of an acid attack on a commercial airliner, regardless of the technical errors contained in my question regarding the material of the bottle in relation to the type of acid.

I would be more interested in the opinion of a chemist or mechanical engineer...you share the same "know it all" attitude that the author of this column has.

Dear Patrick:

I’d like to get your advice regarding a certain scenario, one that is certainly plausible even if less than highly likely.

Suppose I get to the airport for my scheduled flight to see my mother in Boca Raton, and the gate attendant announces that mechanical problems have forced the airline to substitute a Beechcraft King Air 200 for the plane originally scheduled to make the trip? This scenario makes me extremely anxious, and I’m quite concerned that the mere possibility of its occurrence will prevent me from having regular bowel movements until I return from visiting my mother in Florida next month.

I wonder: do you think the TSA should mandate pre-flight psychological examinations of every boarding passenger to determine the likelihood that any of them will try to rip the door open mid-flight and murder everyone on board? Do you suppose random psychiatric evaluations of the passengers might suffice, or do you think that every passenger over the age of three years old should undergo the same rigorous and exhaustive psychological exam, just to be on the safe side? How about cavity searches? Personally, I’d feel much safer knowing the TSA performs thorough rectal exams on all passengers flying the Beechcraft King Air 200, even though I’m not sure of exactly how that would stop them from murdering everyone on the plane. Oh well, better safe than sorry!

Please let me know what you think, as my mother is waiting for me to tell her when it's safe to pick me up at the airport.