Your analysis needs to take into account the social psychology of conformity on individual human behavior. If not one soul acts when the gravity of the situation is made known, then the likelihood of anyone acting remains low. However, the moment a single person acts, due to conformity (see results from any experiments carried out by Solomon Asch for data[0]), the likelihood that many people will act together goes up astronomically. Now, the question to ask to determine if a single person will act is highly related to the presence of passengers on the plane that have been trained to take action, e.g. military personal, EMTs, first responders, Coast Guard, fire fighters, etc. The presence of one or more of these people on a flight greatly increases the chance of someone attempting to wrest control from any hijackers, and others quickly following suit.
Car accidents are always interesting because they often have the same dynamics, those who respond are those who have had even the most rudimentary training to respond. Almost everyone lacking such trainers waits for others to act. As someone trained to act, I've actually been in such a situation first hand as a victim and been the first to respond. I was in a vehicle traveling at ~45mph and another vehicle pulled out without looking. I t-boned her vehicle the moment my car came to a standstill, I whipped out my phone called 911 and immediately after getting off the phone with the 911 operator, I went to check on the other driver.
Trying to analyze people like economists do, considering people to be merely self-interested agents, doesn't paint the whole picture. Many people in society are trained to act in a way contrary to what a simple simulation would suggest. Among 200 people on a plane, the likelihood that there are 2-3 such people trained to respond is pretty high, and at least high enough that a would-be terrorist has no way of knowing if they are lucky enough to have picked the rare plane where no such people trained to respond are present.
Car accidents are always interesting because they often have the same dynamics, those who respond are those who have had even the most rudimentary training to respond. Almost everyone lacking such trainers waits for others to act. As someone trained to act, I've actually been in such a situation first hand as a victim and been the first to respond. I was in a vehicle traveling at ~45mph and another vehicle pulled out without looking. I t-boned her vehicle the moment my car came to a standstill, I whipped out my phone called 911 and immediately after getting off the phone with the 911 operator, I went to check on the other driver.
Trying to analyze people like economists do, considering people to be merely self-interested agents, doesn't paint the whole picture. Many people in society are trained to act in a way contrary to what a simple simulation would suggest. Among 200 people on a plane, the likelihood that there are 2-3 such people trained to respond is pretty high, and at least high enough that a would-be terrorist has no way of knowing if they are lucky enough to have picked the rare plane where no such people trained to respond are present.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments