<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by steve100:
Korean Air and the FAA say it was a miscommunication between the pilot and an air traffic control center made jumpy by the events earlier that day. "
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Personally, I don't think that this reflects badly on Korean or Delta Airlines. September 11th was a horrible day and I can understand that the FAA might of been overly cautious.
[This message has been edited by steve100 (edited 08-14-2002).]</font>
It certainly was a horrible day and of course both the pilot and air traffic controllers were jumpy. If this story is to be believed, however, the pilot set his transponder code to 7500 (hijack) and there is absolutely no excuse for that. There is no way the controller would have told the KE pilot to squawk 7500 and the pilot should have known not to use that frequency unless the plane was being hijacked.
Yes, it was miscommunication but IMHO given the track record of KE it is not impossible that a good part of the blame rests with the pilots.