Well the entire idea behind arming yourself is to learn what the hijacker is armed with.

There is nothing that you can have on you (on the plane) that would be better than a gun. If hijacker has one, either you get shot or stray bullet decompresses the cabin. And before someone tells me that it’s worth to get shot in order to save the souls of all people on board and that they will do it: ok you are right but it is easy to speculate from your chair at home than walking the walk when stuff happens. Now the bomb scenario: well there may be explosives or may not but if it looks like a bomb it should be assumed it is a bomb. Not much you can do to take out a person like that.

That leaves us with person armed with knife, cutter, ice pick, bottle, club or seat belt...

You for your defense also have wine bottle, keys on the lanyard, rolled magazine, flashlight (my favorite)... Now the thing is that you have to make the point to have the weapons available.

What you have to understand is how the attacker armed with a specific weapon works. Understand the basics of close proximity combat. Learn when to keep the distance, and when to close in. Learn advantages and disadvantages of weapons as well as the strike zones (paper club: distance, knife: close combat). Also you have to understand what vital zones to protect when going against an attacker armed with certain weapon. Best thing to really describe it would be prison fighting where men armed with basic stuff inflict huge amount of damage.

But most important sit tight, analyze the situation, keep you eyes open because most of the time the most patient man wins. Also watch out for marshals those guys don’t mess around and are hardcore.