SINCE 9/11 and the United 93 heroes, nothing is the same:

Passengers overpowered a suspected armed hijacker who had commandeered a Mauritanian plane on Thursday when he was knocked off his feet during a hard landing, a source close to the Mauritanian presidency said.

The Air Mauritania Boeing 737 was on an internal flight in Mauritania when the hijacker, armed with pistols, demanded to be flown to France, officials said. The pilot landed in Spain's Canary Islands instead, where Spanish police arrested the man.

"When the pilot landed he deliberately braked very hard. The man fell to the ground and was jumped on by passengers. He fired two bullets but there are no serious injuries," the Mauritanian source told Reuters.

A spokeswoman for the Spanish emergency services said 20 people suffered minor cuts and bruises but added she knew of nobody being injured by gunfire, as one emergency services source had reported earlier.

Spain's Interior Ministry said security forces arrested the hijacker and freed all 71 passengers and eight crew after the plane touched down at Gando airport on the island of Gran Canaria. Media reported the hijacker was North African.

As Glenn Reynolds would say, "a pack, not a herd."