Today was the day of the Air Safety Workshop organised by Total Krav Maga & No Fear Academy. We arrived on site for the afternoon session to be greeted by a grinning José walking out of a Boeing 737. For those that don’t know José, when he has a wide grin from ear to ear you know you are in for a challenge.
We were all taken into a classroom were Nick Maison and José Silva briefed about the next steps. Nothing was given away but we were told to just go with the experience and enjoy it (as much as you can enjoy being hi-jacked). It was now time to board the plane.
Before we were allowed to board the plane, we are all searched for anything that could be used as a weapon, just in case anyone fancied their chances at fighting back to any potential threat. We are all seated in our allocated seats and the stewardess started to talk through the safety aspects of the plane. As she was talking there was a little disruption on the front row which led to someone then rushing to the toilet. The stewardess carried on talking then moments later a masked man walks out the toilet. My heart starts pounding and nerves start to kick in as other masked terrorist appear with weapons from nowhere are shouting and giving us orders to do as they say. For the next 30 minutes or so we are now under terrorist rule.
First, your reaction is to see who the terrorist are and how many there are of them. This is very short lived, as soon as you look at one of them in the eyes you next have a gun to your head or knife to your throat with them shouting “Do not f*cking look at me!! Pull the F*cking blinds and get your f*cking head down!”. The plane has now gone dark, there’s a lot of shouting, you are now forced on your knees and for hands to put on a seat in front. All your senses are going crazy, your heart is pounding and adrenaline takes over and everything starts to become blurry. You’re forced to move into various positions and you dare not look at who is giving you the orders for a threat of a knife or gun being shoved in your face again. As the time went on the plane starts filling with smoke, all you can hear is screams, shouting and people getting hit. During the time one terrorist puts a gun to my head and starts asking questions about who I am? Why am I here? Do I have any family aboard? You instantly fear of giving the wrong answer in case of what happens next. My instinct was to give short answers and not to answer back with anything that would put me in danger. The terrorist now leaves me where I am as I dare not look up. Moments later another hijacker tells me to stand up! He then moves me to another location he shouts at me to sit down and put my seat belt on. I try to calmly put my seat belt on, but struggle to find the correct end of the buckle for my belt. He then forces a gun to my head and shouts louder “PUT YOUR F*CKING SEAT BELT ON!” my nerves are kicking in as a struggle to try and find the correct end. He then continues to shout louder and presses harder with the gun against my head. All that is going through my mind at this point is that I’ve got to get my belt on any second now as I dread to think what he is going to do to me next. Finally, I get my belt on then he leaves me alone. After a while, the atmosphere then starts to change with the hijackers starting to calmly talk to us to reassure us that they don’t want to hurt us. This is a weird feeling as you know you can’t trust them but still feel less stressed as they are no longer threatening us. Moments later the anti-terrorist team board the plane and arrest the hijackers. We are now free and are allowed to leave the plane after further body searches.
| Photo credits to Daily Echo |
The experience is now over. Throughout the whole time you do not know what is going on, when is it going to end and what is going to happen to you or to the others aboard the plane. Whatever you have seen of hi-jack experiences in Hollywood movies is totally different to what happens in reality.
We all gather together outside to talk through what we went through, some people were genuinely terrified, but we all agreed it was an experience worth doing no matter how scary and realistic everything seemed.
After the simulation, we all gathered back in the classroom to go through what had happened and then discuss the techniques we were going to go through for the rest of the session. We all got back onto the plane and put these into practice. These ranged from being a disruptive passenger who was in distress and lashing out, to then being attacked by a passenger with a knife who was sitting or standing as well as disarming of a handgun. It was great going through these techniques in such an enclosed environment where you had to adapt to a smaller and tighter surrounding.
Overall, the whole hi-jack and disruptive passenger experience was both an eye opener and a really enjoyable. Everyone had great fun and to experience it all on an actual plane definitely added to the adrenalin. I would highly recommend the experience to every Krav Maga student.
Thank you, Nick & José for this amazing experience.
Can’t wait for the next one. Check the video here
Darren Willmore