AA flight diverts to BOS
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AA flight diverts to BOS
AA flight 63 diverted to Boston today enroute from Paris to Miami after the passengers subdued a man who was "trying to light a fuse in his shoe"!
We have definately entered some obscure surreal parallel universe! <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
We have definately entered some obscure surreal parallel universe! <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
according to the BBC news just now he had explosives in his shoe and he was trying to light a fuse attached to his shoelace. they also said that he was british using a passport issued 3 days ago in the name of john reed.
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yes, they are saying C4 in shoe, travelling on British passport, "large man of middle eastern apperence". Man travelled WITHOUT any luggage
Tried to ignite device, overpowered by pax sedated by doctors.
Be careful out there, this could be another one of them bad, bad days
was flight direct from paris or did it stop at LHR?
[ 22 December 2001: Message edited by: RogerTangoFoxtrotIndigo ]</p>
Tried to ignite device, overpowered by pax sedated by doctors.
Be careful out there, this could be another one of them bad, bad days
was flight direct from paris or did it stop at LHR?
[ 22 December 2001: Message edited by: RogerTangoFoxtrotIndigo ]</p>
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BOSTON - A Paris to Miami flight was diverted to Logan International Airport this afternoon after a passenger wearing shoes containing an "improvised explosive" attempted to ignite his shoes.
Passengers and crew members of American Airlines Flight 63 helped subdue the man, who became violent when confronted.
The man appeared to be an Arab carrying a false passport issued in Belgium three weeks ago in the name of Richard Reid. WBZ-TV (Ch. 4) reported him as being 28-years-old.
"I'm told the flight attendant was drawn to him by the smell of sulfur from a lit match, and then challenged him as to what he was doing," said Thomas Kinton, interim executive director of the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs the airport.
Passengers and crew members of American Airlines Flight 63 helped subdue the man, who became violent when confronted.
The man appeared to be an Arab carrying a false passport issued in Belgium three weeks ago in the name of Richard Reid. WBZ-TV (Ch. 4) reported him as being 28-years-old.
"I'm told the flight attendant was drawn to him by the smell of sulfur from a lit match, and then challenged him as to what he was doing," said Thomas Kinton, interim executive director of the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs the airport.
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This couldn't come at a worse time. Just as passengers were getting their confidence, then this happens. Even more importantly, how are we going to defend ourselves against something like this?
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If anything is to be learned from this incident, it's that pax with an instinct for self-preservation are far more effective than the farce known as airport screening. Pretty soon they'll be strip-searching everybody.
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Guv.
How do you know? Besides, that's hardly the point.
The psychological impact of terroism is almost as effective as if they would have succeeded in blowing up or damaging the jet.
Strip searching passengers may indeed be in the future.
In any case it is certainly not a fun time to be in this business. Oh, I forgot Guv you don't actually fly airplanes do you?
How do you know? Besides, that's hardly the point.
The psychological impact of terroism is almost as effective as if they would have succeeded in blowing up or damaging the jet.
Strip searching passengers may indeed be in the future.
In any case it is certainly not a fun time to be in this business. Oh, I forgot Guv you don't actually fly airplanes do you?
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I suppose clunky shoes, along with nail files, etc, will now be banned. <img src="mad.gif" border="0">
Kudos to the flight attendant who noticed the sulfur smell - I believe a big reward should be in order for this individual. <img src="smile.gif" border="0">
Kudos to the flight attendant who noticed the sulfur smell - I believe a big reward should be in order for this individual. <img src="smile.gif" border="0">
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That would only make him happy and complete his supposed trip to his waiting 7 virgins!
Who are these people, and how have they gone unnoticed for so long?
Who are these people, and how have they gone unnoticed for so long?
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It looks like once again we may have another breach in security because of penny pinching and airlines paying only lip service to pax screening. Had the airlines employed and trained qualified people to do the pre-screening as El Al do instead of relying on poorly trained check-in staff asking the usual "did you pack your bag yourself and could anyone have tampered with it" questions then the odds of someone travelling without luggage and with other possible profile pointers would never have reached the check-in desk, never mind boarding the aircraft.
Until airlines take this issue seriously and if necessary pass the cost on to the pax then all the 'smoke and mirrors' that the current attempts at cosmetic security will count for nothing. They need to employ highly trained people who know what to ask and what to look for. It will cost and it will mean a bit more time at the airport but when will the airlines realise that they need to invest in this because it only takes one incident to lose them more than the initial cost!
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/10/01/elal-usat.htm" target="_blank">This article from USA Today</a> is a good example:
[quote]Unfriendly skies are no match for El Al
By Vivienne Walt, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com" target="_blank">USA TODAY</a>
JERUSALEM — "Has this luggage ever been used by someone else?" asked the El Al security official, a woman with a soft smile and long ponytail at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris before my departure to Tel Aviv last weekend. She eyed my weathered black bag, sitting on the floor next to a cubicle used for body searches and interrogations. "My husband sometimes uses the suitcase," I said. "Where has he flown?" she pressed. "Once to the Persian Gulf, I think," I replied. That might have set off alarm bells in her mind, but the "selector," as screeners for Israel's national airline are known, had meanwhile found a bigger problem.
Examining each stamp in my passport, she froze at a page with Arabic lettering.
"Where's this for?" she asked. "Syria," I said — one of Israel's bitterest enemies. I hurriedly explained: "I'm a journalist. I went there for the president's funeral."
She summoned a muscular male colleague.
"You traveling alone?" he asked. I replied I was.
"But I saw you talking to someone in line," he said. "Who is he?"
Indeed, to pass the time, I had exchanged a few words with a passenger standing behind me in the long security line about five minutes before. I barely remembered the exchange.
But like everything else when flying El Al, my idle chatter had not gone unnoticed.
So it goes when traveling with the world's most security-conscious airline.
For Americans considering an end to free and easy flying in the USA, El Al provides a glimpse of what might lie ahead after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Having lived for decades with bombs and suicide attacks, Israel designed the industry's most impenetrable flight security more than 20 years ago. Officials say it is a stunning success. Despite several wars and endless conflict at home, El Al's sole hijacking was in 1968, before the system began.
Other catastrophes have been averted since. One bomb was found in 1979 in Zurich in the bag of a German passenger who looked nervous: He had thought he had been hired to smuggle diamonds. Another bomb was discovered a few years ago in the bag of a pregnant English passenger in London, placed there by her Palestinian lover, whose identity security officials had checked beforehand.
The recent suicide hijackings could never have occurred on El Al, officials say. "Those men's names would be on our list," says Shlomo Dror, a Defense Ministry spokesman who helped design El Al's system. Staff also easily would have noticed that the hijackers traveling first class did not look wealthy enough to pay the fare, he said.
For years, the airline industry has lauded El Al's security. Yet until now, no American company has considered copying the elaborate system, which cost El Al about $90 million last year. In 1987, Dror drafted a lengthy security plan for Pan Am Airlines, suggesting profiling passengers, opening bags and hiring professional security staff. The company rejected it as costly and intrusive. One year later, a bomb on a Pan Am flight to New York exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
"American security has been sleeping well for years," says Beni Tal, head of a security consulting firm in Tel Aviv, who has worked on government security. "Now they have woken up forever."
Ironically, after a year of heavy losses, El Al's bookings have soared since Sept. 11, with many passengers too fearful to fly other airlines. In stark contrast to other airlines, El Al shelved its plans to lay off 500 people and withdraw some of its Boeing 747-200 aircraft.
Still, it is not clear that El Al's security can be duplicated. El Al's flight load — about 40 flights a day to about 51 destinations — is minuscule compared with any major American airline. The largest U.S. carrier, American Airlines, by comparison, had about 2,400 daily flights before Sept. 11. And until now, Americans would have resisted the lengthy time involved in the screening process, which can even result in flight delays until the questioning is complete.
Despite their current anxieties, Americans also might balk at El Al-style ethnic profiling. Staff scrutinize the passengers' names, dividing them into low-risk (Israeli or foreign Jews), medium-risk (non-Jewish foreigners) and extremely high-risk travelers (anyone with an Arabic name). These people automatically are taken into a room for body and baggage checks and lengthy interrogation. Single women also are considered high-risk, for fear they might be used by Palestinian lovers to carry bombs.
To sift out who is who, screeners usually begin by asking passengers whether they understand any Hebrew, which most Jews do. Officials argue that such blatant discrimination is necessary.
"We don't ask the same questions to everyone; there's a surprise element so people can't prepare their answers," says El Al spokesman Nachman Klieman, adding that they don't reveal many of their security secrets publicly.
In fact, El Al's security kicks in long before the passenger will notice. Call an El Al office in any city to book a ticket, and your name will be checked against a computer list of terrorist suspects compiled by Interpol, the FBI, Shin Bet (Israel's intelligence service) and others.
My Paris travel agent insisted that the El Al flight on which I had reserved a seat did not exist. That is because El Al changes its schedule so frequently — to foil terrorist planning — that some agencies find it hard to keep up.
Once you board, up to five armed undercover agents will travel with you in strategic aisle seats, ready for attack. Furthermore, like many Israelis, cabin crews are former soldiers in the Israeli military who have received combat training. The cockpit door, of reinforced steel, is locked from the inside before passengers board and is opened only after everyone has disembarked at their destination. No matter what's going on in the rest of the plane, it is never opened during flight.
"Our pilots go to the bathroom," says Klieman, without confirming whether bathrooms are inside the cockpit.
Perhaps surprisingly, El Al's pilots are not armed. "I hear the American pilots want to have arms now, which I think is a bad idea," Tal says. "They could go outside the cockpit and hurt people. You cannot fly a plane and carry arms."
Even for regular El Al customers, the security process never feels comfortable, and the pre-flight probing is sure to make you feel somehow suspect. Watching closely for contradictions, the screener dissected my typically haphazard travel plan as though it were a lethal conspiracy.
"Why did you buy your ticket at the last minute?" the screener asked. "I changed my plans," I said.
"Why are you carrying wrapped boxes?" "I like to bring chocolates when people invite me over for dinner," I said.
"Who chose them in the store?" she asked. "I did," I replied.
By El Al's standards, my screening was light — only 10 minutes of questioning by two well-paid officials with full military training. It ended with one of them locking all the zippers on my suitcase with plastic ties. "Open these when you get to your hotel," she instructed before sending me to the check-in desk.
El Al's process is so time-consuming that passengers are required to arrive three hours before all flights. Passengers can be interrogated separately by three different screeners.
And questioners ask passengers where they purchased their tickets to compare their answers with ticket codes representing the purchase location.
A lot happens behind the scenes, too. Once luggage moves from the check-in desk to the conveyer belt, it is put in a pressurized box that detonates any explosive before the bag is loaded on the plane, Dror says. No unaccompanied bags are allowed. Those bags remain behind.
Bags transferring from another airline to El Al have to be checked through security again.
Security officers watch over cleaning crews while they service the aircraft in foreign airports.
After the intense security, once on board I felt some relief, knowing that I could drop off to sleep without a care while plainclothes agents with firearms sat nearby, wide awake in the dark.<hr></blockquote>
Until airlines take this issue seriously and if necessary pass the cost on to the pax then all the 'smoke and mirrors' that the current attempts at cosmetic security will count for nothing. They need to employ highly trained people who know what to ask and what to look for. It will cost and it will mean a bit more time at the airport but when will the airlines realise that they need to invest in this because it only takes one incident to lose them more than the initial cost!
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/10/01/elal-usat.htm" target="_blank">This article from USA Today</a> is a good example:
[quote]Unfriendly skies are no match for El Al
By Vivienne Walt, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com" target="_blank">USA TODAY</a>
JERUSALEM — "Has this luggage ever been used by someone else?" asked the El Al security official, a woman with a soft smile and long ponytail at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris before my departure to Tel Aviv last weekend. She eyed my weathered black bag, sitting on the floor next to a cubicle used for body searches and interrogations. "My husband sometimes uses the suitcase," I said. "Where has he flown?" she pressed. "Once to the Persian Gulf, I think," I replied. That might have set off alarm bells in her mind, but the "selector," as screeners for Israel's national airline are known, had meanwhile found a bigger problem.
Examining each stamp in my passport, she froze at a page with Arabic lettering.
"Where's this for?" she asked. "Syria," I said — one of Israel's bitterest enemies. I hurriedly explained: "I'm a journalist. I went there for the president's funeral."
She summoned a muscular male colleague.
"You traveling alone?" he asked. I replied I was.
"But I saw you talking to someone in line," he said. "Who is he?"
Indeed, to pass the time, I had exchanged a few words with a passenger standing behind me in the long security line about five minutes before. I barely remembered the exchange.
But like everything else when flying El Al, my idle chatter had not gone unnoticed.
So it goes when traveling with the world's most security-conscious airline.
For Americans considering an end to free and easy flying in the USA, El Al provides a glimpse of what might lie ahead after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Having lived for decades with bombs and suicide attacks, Israel designed the industry's most impenetrable flight security more than 20 years ago. Officials say it is a stunning success. Despite several wars and endless conflict at home, El Al's sole hijacking was in 1968, before the system began.
Other catastrophes have been averted since. One bomb was found in 1979 in Zurich in the bag of a German passenger who looked nervous: He had thought he had been hired to smuggle diamonds. Another bomb was discovered a few years ago in the bag of a pregnant English passenger in London, placed there by her Palestinian lover, whose identity security officials had checked beforehand.
The recent suicide hijackings could never have occurred on El Al, officials say. "Those men's names would be on our list," says Shlomo Dror, a Defense Ministry spokesman who helped design El Al's system. Staff also easily would have noticed that the hijackers traveling first class did not look wealthy enough to pay the fare, he said.
For years, the airline industry has lauded El Al's security. Yet until now, no American company has considered copying the elaborate system, which cost El Al about $90 million last year. In 1987, Dror drafted a lengthy security plan for Pan Am Airlines, suggesting profiling passengers, opening bags and hiring professional security staff. The company rejected it as costly and intrusive. One year later, a bomb on a Pan Am flight to New York exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
"American security has been sleeping well for years," says Beni Tal, head of a security consulting firm in Tel Aviv, who has worked on government security. "Now they have woken up forever."
Ironically, after a year of heavy losses, El Al's bookings have soared since Sept. 11, with many passengers too fearful to fly other airlines. In stark contrast to other airlines, El Al shelved its plans to lay off 500 people and withdraw some of its Boeing 747-200 aircraft.
Still, it is not clear that El Al's security can be duplicated. El Al's flight load — about 40 flights a day to about 51 destinations — is minuscule compared with any major American airline. The largest U.S. carrier, American Airlines, by comparison, had about 2,400 daily flights before Sept. 11. And until now, Americans would have resisted the lengthy time involved in the screening process, which can even result in flight delays until the questioning is complete.
Despite their current anxieties, Americans also might balk at El Al-style ethnic profiling. Staff scrutinize the passengers' names, dividing them into low-risk (Israeli or foreign Jews), medium-risk (non-Jewish foreigners) and extremely high-risk travelers (anyone with an Arabic name). These people automatically are taken into a room for body and baggage checks and lengthy interrogation. Single women also are considered high-risk, for fear they might be used by Palestinian lovers to carry bombs.
To sift out who is who, screeners usually begin by asking passengers whether they understand any Hebrew, which most Jews do. Officials argue that such blatant discrimination is necessary.
"We don't ask the same questions to everyone; there's a surprise element so people can't prepare their answers," says El Al spokesman Nachman Klieman, adding that they don't reveal many of their security secrets publicly.
In fact, El Al's security kicks in long before the passenger will notice. Call an El Al office in any city to book a ticket, and your name will be checked against a computer list of terrorist suspects compiled by Interpol, the FBI, Shin Bet (Israel's intelligence service) and others.
My Paris travel agent insisted that the El Al flight on which I had reserved a seat did not exist. That is because El Al changes its schedule so frequently — to foil terrorist planning — that some agencies find it hard to keep up.
Once you board, up to five armed undercover agents will travel with you in strategic aisle seats, ready for attack. Furthermore, like many Israelis, cabin crews are former soldiers in the Israeli military who have received combat training. The cockpit door, of reinforced steel, is locked from the inside before passengers board and is opened only after everyone has disembarked at their destination. No matter what's going on in the rest of the plane, it is never opened during flight.
"Our pilots go to the bathroom," says Klieman, without confirming whether bathrooms are inside the cockpit.
Perhaps surprisingly, El Al's pilots are not armed. "I hear the American pilots want to have arms now, which I think is a bad idea," Tal says. "They could go outside the cockpit and hurt people. You cannot fly a plane and carry arms."
Even for regular El Al customers, the security process never feels comfortable, and the pre-flight probing is sure to make you feel somehow suspect. Watching closely for contradictions, the screener dissected my typically haphazard travel plan as though it were a lethal conspiracy.
"Why did you buy your ticket at the last minute?" the screener asked. "I changed my plans," I said.
"Why are you carrying wrapped boxes?" "I like to bring chocolates when people invite me over for dinner," I said.
"Who chose them in the store?" she asked. "I did," I replied.
By El Al's standards, my screening was light — only 10 minutes of questioning by two well-paid officials with full military training. It ended with one of them locking all the zippers on my suitcase with plastic ties. "Open these when you get to your hotel," she instructed before sending me to the check-in desk.
El Al's process is so time-consuming that passengers are required to arrive three hours before all flights. Passengers can be interrogated separately by three different screeners.
And questioners ask passengers where they purchased their tickets to compare their answers with ticket codes representing the purchase location.
A lot happens behind the scenes, too. Once luggage moves from the check-in desk to the conveyer belt, it is put in a pressurized box that detonates any explosive before the bag is loaded on the plane, Dror says. No unaccompanied bags are allowed. Those bags remain behind.
Bags transferring from another airline to El Al have to be checked through security again.
Security officers watch over cleaning crews while they service the aircraft in foreign airports.
After the intense security, once on board I felt some relief, knowing that I could drop off to sleep without a care while plainclothes agents with firearms sat nearby, wide awake in the dark.<hr></blockquote>
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Hey Raas,
Unfortunately there is a name for them-Sleepers, who keep low profile until activated.
Question is, who are the others?
I can give you some idea what they look like, but i'd be a rascist if I did.
Unfortunately there is a name for them-Sleepers, who keep low profile until activated.
Question is, who are the others?
I can give you some idea what they look like, but i'd be a rascist if I did.
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But at least letting him light the fuse or helping him to do so away from anyone else (after the plane has landed) would stop anyone innocent being injured. If he is so keen to blow himself up why let him live to try again another time when he may not be caught! After all the courts may release him in a few years time to try again.
Anyone who want's to kill innocent PAX deserves what he gets. I am sure his fellow PAX would have liked to deal with him when they landed!
Anyone who want's to kill innocent PAX deserves what he gets. I am sure his fellow PAX would have liked to deal with him when they landed!
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It is clearly time to wake up and smell the coffee.
Forget political correctness, forget hurting someone feelings, it is this left wing, tread carefully, don't rock the boat attitude, fuelled by scum sucking, bottom feeding, ambulence chasing attourneys, that has contributed in no small way to the position we are in today. Profile these murderers.
If a team of catholic Nuns had been responsible for the WTC attrocity then every Catholic Nun who tries to get on an aircraft should have to go through intense security screening. If they were of middle eastern origin then scrutinize the middle easterners.
The policy may not earn you votes - so what?
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is probably a duck!!!
Stop the inane searching of flight crews and making us undress in full public view simply to dress up the apparent security for the flying public. Stop using the opportunity to have a cheap feel of a Flight Atttendants breasts, stop stealing our nailfiles, stop running your nasty hands up and down the legs of a 25 year old lady passenger who is wearing a mini skirt and tell us that the FAA has told you to do this. Most of the security screeners can't spell FAA or CAA anyway!!
DO YOUR JOB - PROTECT AND SERVE
Enough is enough
Forget political correctness, forget hurting someone feelings, it is this left wing, tread carefully, don't rock the boat attitude, fuelled by scum sucking, bottom feeding, ambulence chasing attourneys, that has contributed in no small way to the position we are in today. Profile these murderers.
If a team of catholic Nuns had been responsible for the WTC attrocity then every Catholic Nun who tries to get on an aircraft should have to go through intense security screening. If they were of middle eastern origin then scrutinize the middle easterners.
The policy may not earn you votes - so what?
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is probably a duck!!!
Stop the inane searching of flight crews and making us undress in full public view simply to dress up the apparent security for the flying public. Stop using the opportunity to have a cheap feel of a Flight Atttendants breasts, stop stealing our nailfiles, stop running your nasty hands up and down the legs of a 25 year old lady passenger who is wearing a mini skirt and tell us that the FAA has told you to do this. Most of the security screeners can't spell FAA or CAA anyway!!
DO YOUR JOB - PROTECT AND SERVE
Enough is enough
The Reverend
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Semtex in shoes, what next? Will passengers be issued with airline slippers prior to boarding and their shoes stowed in the hold? That at least won't bother a lot of Aussie pax who like to travel barefoot in shorts and singlet. 
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Hopefully some of the pax managed to lay the boot into this piece of crud.
Summary execution would appear to be the best option for these clowns. No trial - just a bullet to the back of the head.
One less psycho to worry about.
Summary execution would appear to be the best option for these clowns. No trial - just a bullet to the back of the head.
One less psycho to worry about.
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What puzzles me is why did this guy behaved so indiscreetly? The smell of a match stick lighting up worst still when it goes off is a dead give away wouldn't it? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
I guess he had to resort to primitive trigger mechanism.
I guess he had to resort to primitive trigger mechanism.