Utilitarian Analysis of Shooting Down Hijacked Planes
This paper applies utilitarian ethical reasoning to the events surrounding United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, to evaluate whether shooting down a hijacked aircraft can be morally justified. The analysis examines three core questions: whether such a policy effectively protects cities and infrastructure, whether it deters future terrorism, and whether the harm inflicted on passengers aboard is outweighed by potential benefits to the broader public. Drawing a parallel to the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis, the paper argues that a shoot-down policy may inadvertently serve terrorist goals by spreading fear and making transportation infrastructure a perpetual target, ultimately concluding that alternative preventive measures are preferable.
- Introduction: Flight 93 facts and competing accounts
- The Utilitarian Framework and Flight 93: Utilitarian framing of passengers versus ground targets
- Three Key Questions of Justification: Three normative questions about shoot-down policy
- The Moscow Theater Parallel: Moscow siege as analogy for unintended terror consequences
- Conclusion: Shoot-down policy rejected; prevention preferred
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What makes this paper effective
- It structures the utilitarian analysis around three clearly stated questions, giving the argument a logical progression that is easy to follow.
- The Moscow theater hostage crisis is used as an effective real-world parallel that extends the shoot-down argument beyond aviation, strengthening the core claim.
- The paper acknowledges the "greater good" rationale before systematically dismantling it, demonstrating intellectual honesty and analytical depth.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates the technique of reductio ad absurdum within an ethical framework: it grants the utilitarian premise (that shooting down a plane may save more lives on the ground) and then shows that the policy's unintended consequences — amplifying terror and enabling future attacks — undermine the very calculus it relies on. This move from concession to refutation is a hallmark of strong applied-ethics argumentation.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by situating the factual dispute around Flight 93, then shifts to the utilitarian framework, poses three normative questions, evaluates each using historical evidence, and closes with a policy recommendation. The argument flows linearly from fact to framework to critique to conclusion, making it a clear model of applied ethical reasoning at the undergraduate level.
Introduction
The utilitarian approach to ethical dilemmas requires that the various courses of action available and their respective consequences be studied in detail. The benefits or harms of each option are weighed so that the course of action producing the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people can be chosen. Applied to the events of September 11, 2001, this framework yields a challenging set of questions about state power, individual life, and the unintended consequences of security policy.
United Airlines Flight 93 was the last of the four hijacked planes to go down in the United States on September 11, 2001. It crashed, killing 44 persons — 40 passengers and crew members and four terrorists. The widely circulated account holds that passengers, after learning of the other hijacked planes via mobile phones, stormed the cockpit and forced the plane down. Alternate versions have suggested that the U.S. military shot the plane down, or that a bomb detonated aboard; both claims have been denied by officials.
The location of U.S. Air Force jets at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at 9:35 a.m. — precisely the time that Flight 93 turned almost 180 degrees off course toward Washington — lent credence to the shoot-down theory (Carlin, 2002). However, the shoot-down scenario was effectively discounted following the congressional submission of the events (United States Government Printing Office, 2001). This paper proceeds on the assumption that the passengers themselves crashed the plane, and evaluates the ethics of a hypothetical shoot-down policy through a utilitarian lens.
References
Carlin, John. (2002). Unanswered questions: The mystery of Flight 93. Retrieved 17 December 2011 from
CNN. (2002). Many hostages lost in Russian theater standoff. Retrieved 17 December 2011 from http://articles.cnn.com/2002-10-27/us/russia.siege1hostage-standoff-people-hostage-andrei-seltsovsky?s=PM:fyi
United States Government Printing Office. (2001). Congressional record: Proceedings and debates of the 107th Congress, First Session, Vol. 147 — Part 19. United States Government Printing Office.
Wheeler, Jack. (2002). The secret Russian gas identified. Retrieved 17 December 2011 from
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