An Awesome Classic Story I Wish I’d Seen At The Time

Last Updated on: 29th July 2012, 12:59 pm

You know, with my crazy schedule, I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with Twitter anymore. I’d come home from work, stare at the piles of tweets that had accumulated, and then promptely decide I could put my time to better use by doing…anything but reading them all.

But today, I came across the following Cracked article, and realize here’s another reason to stay on Twitter. 6 Brilliant Ways Hostages Outwitted Their Captors

I think I like no. 6 the best. Why in hell did I not find this when it happened? We had a blog after all.

Quick summary, because it’s fun. In 2007, some guy hijacked a plane headed from Mauritania to the Canary Islands. He told the pilot that he’d better get this plane to France where he would request political asylum. The pilot soon figured out that, um, we don’t have enough fuel to go that far.

Somehow, he figured out the hijacker didn’t speak any French. So he fixed his wagon in epic fashion by picking up his handy dandy microphone and giving a rather unusual “this is your captain speaking” type address to the passengers…all in french. It basically was “We’re going to make a rough landing. When the hijacker falls down, rush the cockpit! All the women and littluns get out of the way near the back of the plane, and the rest of you, go get ’em!”

And they sure had a rough landing, causing Mr. non-French-speaking hijacker to fall down…and promptly get completely and utterly pulverized by about 10 passengers…and crew who threw boiling water on him.

It’s a good thing only the hijacker fell down. Otherwise that could have gone horribly wrong. But I do have one big question. Why would you request asylum in a country whose language you don’t speak? Oh well, why do the dumb criminals do half the things they do?

What a crime that we didn’t hear about this at the time, but at least it’s up now.