The 23-year-old son of a banker from Nigeria should have tripped every alarm in the global aviation-security system put in place after 9/11: He bought a $2,831 ticket for flights from Lagos to Amsterdam to Detroit and paid for it in cash. He left no contact information with the airline. He checked no bags. Seven months earlier, he had earned himself a spot on a security watch list in Britain after applying for a visa to attend a dubious English university. And when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab broke off contact with his family in October to join the war on the West, his own father reported him as a possible threat at the U.S. embassy in Abuja, where he met with a CIA officer.
But American officials either missed all these warnings or failed to act on them. Not until Northwest Flight 253 was beginning its final descent into Detroit, at about 11:40 Christmas morning, did a handful of passengers step in to do what all the early-warning systems and security personnel could not: stop a terrorist trying to detonate a bomb on a plane on the quietest morning of the year. Just as the cabin crew strapped in for landing, an explosion--it sounded like a firecracker--came from the left side of the fuselage just over the wing. Alain Ghonda--a 38-year-old, Silver Spring, Md., real estate consultant, who was sitting in seat 18H--immediately stood up, in defiance of the seat-belt sign, and looked to his left. Ghonda remained upright another minute and soon saw thick, dark gray smoke coming from the man in seat 19A. He pointed across the cabin and yelled, "Fire!" As he did, flames began to shoot from Abdulmutallab's lap.
Instantly, a second passenger, Jasper Schuringa, a Dutch video producer sitting two seats behind Ghonda, leaped up, hopscotched across the middle section of seats and threw himself on top of the bomber, shouting at his fellow passengers to pass water bottles and blankets his way. Other passengers screamed; some ran to other cabins. "I don't want to die! I want out!" yelled one. Two flight attendants, alarmed by the smell of smoke, rushed past the dozens of passengers out of their seats to find fire extinguishers. They doused Abdulmutallab and Schuringa as well as the burning seat, the floor, the walls and the surrounding area. Abdulmutallab, his pants torched, naked from waist to knees, was hustled by Schuringa and crew members to the first-class cabin, where he was restrained. The whole thing had taken less than 10 minutes.
Passengers later said there was something curious about the spare young man who had tried to bring down their plane: he was silent throughout the attack. He didn't panic. He didn't yell any last-second religious slogans. He was calm and methodical as he set himself on fire. It was as though he had been trained.