This is true. Like I said, it was safer for them to just lie, but on this flight, with everything else working against them, it seemed like just killing them would be easier, especially considering they did grow grapefruit-sized balls and start fighting back. They had a bit more than plastic knives, like Leather Mans and mace (although I don't know if they had mace on that plane). I'm just wondering if we're thinking about it from a post-911 perspective. Yeah, if anyone tried that shit today, I'm sure the entire contingent of the plane would be on them in a moment. But the fact is that the hijackers DID use those limited resources to attack and kill members of the crew and cow the rest of the passengers into submission even though they were greatly outnumbered. The plane was compartmentalized. They could have divided the passengers into groups, bound and gagged them (under the threat of death), and executed them without any of the other groups knowing that anything was going on. Of course, that's just my opinion, but since they seemed so easy to take control of in the first place, it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to physically restrain them either, not to mention it would be quite a bit safer for the hijackers. And according to what I read, one of the bodies pulled out of the wreckage of the WTC debris was a flight attendant who was bound with what seemed to be plastic handcuffs, meaning they could have had access to them AND that plastic handcuffs could have gotten through airport security (hell, a four-inch utility knife was found on one of the hijackers going through security, and that was apparently perfectly fine back in the day).