They Always Bury the Lead

What sort of airline passenger are you?

(Bob) Hayden's wife of 42 years, Katie, who was also on the flight, was less impressed. Even as her husband struggled with the agitated passenger, she barely looked up from "The Richest Man in Babylon," the book she was reading.

"The woman sitting in front of us was very upset and asked me how I could just sit there reading," Katie Hayden said. "Bob's been shot at. He's been stabbed. He's taken knives away. He knows how to handle those situations. I figured he would go up there and step on somebody's neck, and that would be the end of it. I knew how that situation would end. I didn't know how the book would end."

UPDATE: More on Bob Hayden; my kind of guy:

“The flight attendant waived the handcuffs (plastic ties), which was the signal we had agreed on and the Marine and I subdued both men; I cuffed one while he was on the ground,” Bob recalls. The men causing the disturbance were belted tightly into their seats and Bob and the Marine sat next to them until, after the flight landed, the State Police arrived and took them off the plane.

Bob said passengers on the flight were frightened and some were crying. “One woman asked me, ‘are we going to die?’ I said, ‘someday, but not today,’” he recalled.