Suspected bomb on board El Al 787 30 April 2021
 

From AV Herald

Anybody knows what a reason can be for continuing the flight for all those hours with a suspected bomb on board?
Except for standard procedure maybe, any practical reason why fighters need to fly along it for all those hours? Not really much they can do...

It is not advisable to discuss tactical details isn't it?

Less Hair is absolutely right, we should not discuss tactics here

Neither do I.

Is it allowed to discuss meaningless and wild speculations that are purposefully incorrect to confuse and mislead the enemy?

Well I guess I am lacking imagination but I don't see how this is making much sense in a "tactical" point of view. Let's see what transpires in the coming hours / days, if anything.

Thankfully a false warning apparently:

Bomb Warning

This is how NATO waste's energy, six fighters with after burners, crowding the air traffic unnecessarily, a mere show of friendliness to Israel. With a suspected bomb warning, a passenger air liner should land immediately and evacuate, a better flight safety action.

I am not privy to any "secret tactics," but common sense tells me that even in a bomb-on-board situation, there are quite good reasons for a fighter escort.

1) provide eyeballs on the plane in trouble: suppose the transponder signal (or COM transmission) disappears? Is it an explosion, or an electrical fault, or a reversion to a Plan B (attempted hijacking)? An escorting jet can see whether the plane is still there, or making hand signals, or has too many people in the cockpit. Radar can't.

1a) And, of course, take tragic-but-necessary action if the situation has fallen completely under unfriendly control - or literally out of control altogether.

2) provide asssistance in case of a non-catastrophic explosion (aircraft have survived bombings on occasion): Escorts can - inspect damage/leaks and report to flight crew - provide navigation help in case of instrument/NAV damage - relay messages - report situation in general to ground - request emergency response on landing if civilian crew cannot.

3) As to why fly for 4 additional hours to Tel Aviv? El Al is a special case (they have a - history - of being a prime target). And they have the strictest security on the planet.

Again, I have no clue as to their actual tactical options. But as a neutral observer, I'd imagine that Israel would really, really prefer that if there is even the possibility of a bad-actor on board, that (s)he be de-planed directly into their custody. Without "complications" from the laws, judges, extradition agreements, or politics of the other countries enroute.

I don't think it is giving much away to put forward that if you *really* thought there was a bomb on board, would you carry on to your final destination while overflying lots of airfields? Just saying...

There are lots of reasons why you may not want to land in even a “neutral” country let alone a country that is sympathetic to your domestic enemies.
Enough said.

In reality, there is very little that is secret or confidential that Prooners could give away and which would be of help to a real terrorist. However, there have been more than enough nutters around who, in the past, have manufactured false bomb warnings. My reasons for counselling against discussing bomb threats is to ensure they gain no help from any of us.

It is always amazing to see people jumping to conclusions after a media news report . I do not know who "Channel 12" is and what was their source.
One thing I know first hand is that the procedures for dealing with these issues are done by experts, who know what they are doing by now, and are really not for discussion in an open Internet forum .

The experts only need to be wrong once

Agree but they have not been so far. In fact the ones we dealt with in my time were very good. And those of the nationality of the aircraft involved here are probably among the best there are in the world .

B2N2

Perhaps they did not want anyone, even a “friendly” police force looking around in the cargo compartments...

B2N2

Such as Portugal, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Greece?

So many assumptions made here on near to zero facts. Rest assured that the situation would have been discussed and evaluated by all parties concerned and that the final decision to continue was made according to all the factual information they had (and which we haven't got). Pre departure security on ELY flights is very intense.

Maybe the found the bomb and used the battery chute to chuck it?:cool:

Pistonprop

True.

Though of course the crucial fact - that there was no bomb on board - was not, and could not have been, definitively established until after arrival at TLV.

Sure, maybe! My point is that they had a lot more pertinent details at hand to make a risk assessment with. How was the bomb warning made? The crew quite rightly reported it to ATC. After that it may well have been that further investigation by all (El Al) parties involved concluded that it was highly likely to be a hoax and the decision was made to continue. The bottom line is that we just don't know. I am however convinced that they knew exactly what they were doing.