Your retired 747 pilot friend must have a short memory as I recollect that only recently I viewed an episode where an aeroplane passenger attempted to commit suicide.
Maybe you missed my recent comment on this episode, where a member of the cabin crew, who was in dire financial trouble, tried to force the pilots to ditch the plane, so his family could claim monetary compensation. Only the herculean efforts by some of the crew prevented an unmitigated disaster.
And of course there was the episode where the maintenance crew forgot to turn on the switch that provides oxygen and, at some point on the flight, everyone on board suffered from oxygen deprivation, resulting in total disaster. Here is a summary of the disaster:
'The Boeing 737's pressurisation system is believed to have been incorrectly set by maintenance and oxygen starvation had knocked out German Captain Hans-Jurgen Merten and Cypriot co-pilot Pambos Charalambous. They never checked the system before takeoff, which had undergone testing prior to flight.'
