Should your passenger jet have a trap door?

Our friends over at Boing Boing found an interesting article at Neatorama exploring some pretty wild patents to combat terrorism.

It's great to have inventive minds out there mind you, but having scoured USPTO.gov more than a few times myself over the past few years, you kind of get the feeling that some people have a little bit too much spare time and too much imagination.

The ideas range from a haz-mat suit with a toilet built into it to a mobile crematorium that kind of looks like a barbeque that you would drag down to the campsite, but our favorite here at Gadling is the airplane trap door.

See, if terrorists take over the passenger cabin and start working their way up to the cockpit, there's a trap door (a-la Scooby Doo style) that the pilots can open up, capturing the would-be hijacker in a compartment under the floor. I imagine that this drawing has a giant lever with a red handle on it that the pilot can pull, although I'm not sure where it is.

Neatorama also suggests that the device could be improved by adding alligators to the compartment to take care of the terrorsists.

Just make sure that you don't bump the lever by accident during the beverage service, or you might lose a flight attendant.

You can check out the Neatorama list here, or read Boing Boing's comments here.

Filed under: Airlines