Might not affect 1.4 but I have no way of knowing due to the lack of a Bukkit build for 1.4
https://bukkit.atlassian.net/browse/BUKKIT-2283
Sent with player abilities packet, it appears there are 1 or 2 lines of missing code which cause this functionality to not work.
setting player flight speed works though. This would be useful to freeze players and other stuff
This is indeed fixed in the 1.4 client.