A) They will never be able to prove that this is safe for the occupants of the aircraft.
B) They do not care about this, as their main objective is keeping the aircraft away from sensitive areas on the ground.
C) If you do not care about the safety of the occupants of the aircraft, here is an existing solution to this problem, which will not put occupants of aircraft not threatening a sensitive area in danger. They're called SAM missiles.
If they do implement this harebrained scheme, it is only a matter of time before someone decides that terrorism by remote control is a lot more fun as it does not involve the suicide part, which probably has a severe impact on the enjoyment of the celebrations afterwards. Oh, so it can only be used to force aircraft to steer away from certain areas? Well, then they'll have to settle for keeping any amount of transatlantic flights from reaching runways until they come down in the ocean due to lack of fuel...
For the time being, I will keep my belief in common sense prevailing and write this off as yet another attempt by some think tank to gain publicity and keep the wages coming for a while more.
Last edited by ft; 14th Jun 2008 at 18:10.
Reason: Words are better than images in a serious forum such as this.