Originally Posted by
Airbubba
Are you implying that it was possibly one of those cases of industrial sabotage that sometimes occur in times of militant labor activism?
Originally Posted by
A320LGW
That is what the word on the street is
Wow.
The worse case I recall of this form of 'activism' was the arson of the Dupont Plaza Hotel in SJU during a Teamsters strike in 1986. Nearly 100 fatalities as I recall.
In the unrest leading up to the 1989 Eastern Airlines strike Charlie Bryan's Machinists would find wires cut on aircraft. Door slides would mysteriously pop on planes in the hangar for maintenance.
When the strike was finally called to go down at the traditional 12:01 am the evening maintenance shift was locked out preemptively to avoid further celebratory sabatoge.
During the EAL strike an observation station was set up on the top floor of the Viscount hotel in MIA with binoculars and radio scanners to monitor the operations of the replacement pilots. Possibly not related but unauthorized transmissions on tower frequency would sometimes give bogus instructions to the pilots who crossed the picket line to fly the passengers.
Three decades later I would think that hangar surveillance cameras would catch someone intentionally messing with the fire detection system. Or would they?