svhar - selecting A7500 would be safer, its the quiet ones that cause concern......

The decision matrix is not "comm contact lost, shoot jet."
You realize that, right?

For example, there was no cueing that a particular comms contact lost was out of the ordinary until the first jet hit a building. At that point, during a time in which the presumption of that tactic was not on the table, the timeline to get whatever alerts (and perhaps tankers?) were at hand up, and then within the vicinity of an unknown number of jets of interst (which of the hundreds in the air, and where are they?) across an entire continent does not lead to your posited FOUR opportunities.

Maybe 1, maybe 2, depending on how you reconstruct the time and space problems. As I suspect you are aware, while it is all going down, figuring out which flights are potential hazards takes time.

Exactly.

And the PR for a government - whether shooting down the 'right jet' filled with innocent hostages or the 'wrong' jet that was mis-identified as a threat is disastrous, possibly terminal and wonderful for the terrorists.

The idea that we would shoot down a civilian airliner, taken hostage or not is ridiculous and it should be stated with no reservation that we don't do it & any loss of lives from a terrorist act is only the responsibility of the terrorists & not our reaction to their act.

i only can imagine she exploded hard last night and was still under impression ? ;)

the costs of this thing the airline will bill her for surely cool her down...

I agree with Load Toad. The idea of shooting down a plane is totally absurd.

Then the terrorists have won big time. Hysteria everywhere. One wrong word uttered, hysteria. We have taken the course of action that they hoped for.

In my opinion, there are only two ways. Let them live their way or eliminate them. Teaching others a lesson does not work. Read some history books.

To really bugger us up, is to add a little something to the Chinese/Indian take- aways on a Friday night. Army, Air force and Navy will be on the loo.

Sorted!!!!


Ps. I'm awaiting first reports of the tampon bomber:E Built in fuse, if you know what I mean:E

Absolutely correct although I wouldn't say everywhere. The Americans are the undisputed masters of hysterical OTT reactions. Seen it personally more than once. To be honest, the sheer hysterical reactions of some Americans frightens me more than the terrorists do!

Found on another site:
That is yet another problem with so-called "security": When people make obvious threats, they are let off, often without even a hand-slap.

What was the "obvious" threat exactly INTRUDER? My interpretation is that something said innocently by a French national struggling with the English language was (wrongly) perceived to be a threat by an American crew.

For this, said person is now (rightly) released and yet (wrongly) refused entry into the USA. That tells you a lot about the hysteria and absurd logic which now prevails with the American authorities. The loonies are in charge of the asylum!

I work daily with a multitude of nationalities. Even though most have a reasonably good to fair command of the English language it is not unusual to find them sometimes lacking clarity when expressing themselves in non standard situations. American hysteria has programmed the public, airline crews, and officials to consider anything which they don't understand as a threat.

Is it not possable to have a helicopter hover above the plane and some SAS members climb onboard and cut a hole in the fuz and then go in and kill the baddies or to drain the fuels from the tanks etc limiting the range it could fly ???????

Pilot 999
 

now what was that movie called...

Airport 1975. Although in the movie they didn't have to cut any hole in the fuselage seeing as there was already a big gaping hole in the pointy end nor were there any "baddies" to kill.
Possibly one of the worst "disaster movies" ever made by man... :ugh:

Presenting a prepared note of that type to the flight attendant is NOT typical of "innocently... struggling with the English language." It is more typical of, as others have pointed out, "probing" or other reconnaissance.

I tend to believe the threat was real, even if not immediate.

There was a scenario not unlike that in "Executive Decision." Now that was a truly awful movie!