Another drunk passenger, another dispatch of fighter jets
 

This is getting really ridiculous...

Source

I hope the F-16 were helpful in assisting the drunk pax in vomiting.

Great idea! Drunk passenger, shoot down the plane. Have we gone completely nuts?

I wonder what the FBI is going to do with him-- they can charge him with trumped up charges that have absurd prison terms, or they can leave it at some form of PI/DC. This will show their true colors . . . wait and see.

but at least they didn't dump the terminal at cos for 6+ hours ;)

here's the official press release from airtran and i'm wondering if they will have to pay royalties to the tsa for using the expression "out of an abundance of caution" ;)

http://pressroom.airtran.com/phoenix...089&highlight=

oh, and something tells me we're gonna be seeing a lot of this in the near future (and god help the poor pax who has a case of the runs :eek:)

Scrambling jets for drunks is now SOP. Thank you President Obama.

let's not send this off to omni k? :) it ain't his fault. look what happened after 9/11-we had the army stationed in and patrolling our own airport terminals.

so with that being said, if you are going to blame anyone, you have to blame the captain of the aircraft as right, wrong or indifferent, the captain is in charge of the aircraft and their decision is law. it's about the closest thing to absolute rule that you can have.

It's the new heavy handed version of Scared Straight. For only $10,000/hour.

Fighter pilot on bullyhorn: "Hey drunk. Promise to join AA or we will shoot down your plane."

What does the USAF have in the way of air-to-air armaments anyway? Sparrows, Sidewinders, AMRAAM, or just plain ol' 20mm cannon?

All of the above depending on the load.

Wonder how long it will be before an airliner gets splashed because of stupidity like this? You don't send fighters up to bring down an airliner with a drunken passenger. That presents too much of a chance to have something go wrong (i.e. air to air collision, weapons discharge, etc). Save that for aircraft being hijacked.

...not to mention that a drunk passenger can't be a Muslim. Indeed, out an abundance of caution, they should ask all passengers to get drunk. If someone refuses off to GITMO!

You apparently never went to Bahrain. :D

Most Muslims will - whenever they've access to alcohol - use it in rather large amounts, and as they aren't used to it, will get drunk quickly (with the obvious results..)

Would Sidewinders cause enough damage? I imagine at least one for each engine. Looking up the 3 incidents of airliners beign shot down by fighters:

KE 902 (707) was forced to land after being hit by a pair of R60 (Aphids). KE7 was destroyed by a pair of R8 (Anabs). LN114 (727) was brought down by 20mm cannon.

I'd like to see it happen (with me or anyone I care for not on the said a/c, of course) and see the reaction after.

Not very observant ones and especially not right before a martyrdom operation.

Control surfaces are very delicate (ever noticed NO STEP ?)

You'd be disappointed: I guess collateral damage has entered the general public's state of mind.

It will be a dramatic accident, of course.

Sidewinders are heatseeking so will go for the engines.

which are found where on a jetliner ?

Suspect that an incident like that would pretty much put an end to most commercial aviation (non cargo). The political fallout from an incident like that would have people being led away in handcuffs especially since many folks don't know that the Posse Comitatus Act was repealed.

Now, now, some sources claim the per flight hour cost of an F-16 is “only” ~$7,000.

Look at all the money we saved by not sending F-15s at $30,000/hour this time! :p

Best thing would be to rebuild the Nike coverage, so that a plane is always within reach of a missile. Radio triggered self destruct, like we have on experimental rockets would work too. Let TSA be in charge of the control room :)

The sensitive controls such as ailerons are towards the wing tips. Flaps, which generally tend to be nearer the center of the a/c aren't necessary for basic flight control. The a/c should be able to survive and engine being blown off (or rather, peel away as a result of being blown off) but definitely not two.

FWIW, the DHL A300 that was hit by a SAM at Baghdad in 2003, according to wikipedia, managed to land despite total loss of hydraulic flight controls, not too different to UA 232 (DC-10) at SUX. Evidently, it survived this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...3F%2C_BIAP.jpg

Let's say the a/c could survive an engine blown off. All the mechanical actuators have to reach the wing tips and they pass near the engine.

@AngryMiller

I must confess not knowing a lot about the KE7 flight shot above the USSR airspace, but I seem to remember airlines still decided to fly over the Russian airspace after that, so I guess you're overly optimistic (I'd love to be, as well) by predicting it would be a hard blow to the air travel industry.

Would it matter?

I seem to recall that the military aircraft eventually dispatched on 9/11 had no armaments fittes (or if they did, no facility to activate them.)

If they are loaded, they are active.

Except for the fighters ^to this crew.

The wreckage of that flight went into the ocean. The Soviets did their best to intercept remains, wreckage, etc so as to keep it away from the press. Some remains and wreckage did wash up on the shores of Japanese northern islands. You bring down an airliner in CONUS and you'll have serious problems. Also flight 007 was owned and operated by the S. Koreans so except for the few Americans on board it was a Korean problem.

IIRC, one of the pilots after UA93 was said to have considered ramming the a/c as the plane was unarmed. Moot point as the a/c was crashed before interception.

All the 3 air-to-air shootdown incidents I referred to earlier happened over 26 years ago, so most people here (I wager) were very young if even born. KE7 was flying over prohibited Soviet airspace. Some airlines, notably JL and maybe SK, have long had trans-Siberian flights through Soviet airspace throughout the Cold War (sm).

Sending up fighters for minor onboard passenger issues is asking for trouble.

I feel the airline industry is on the edge of complete failure. One major incident caused by something like a fighter firing on a passenger aircraft could well end air travel as we know it today.

Folks need to settle down and realize the risks are just not that high.

Sorry, we just can't risk introducing logic into aviation security related issues. It's a slippery slope from "launching fighters due to a drunk passenger is overkill" to "confiscating shampoo doesn't make us any safer" or even *gasp* "information shouldn't be designated SSI just because it could embarrass the TSA" and then the whole system would fall apart and the terrorists would have won.:D

Who was drunk?
 

Did I miss something, but where is it stated/proven that a passenger was drunk?

I am old enough to know how this government works, and that take some years of observance.

TWENTY YEARS FROM NOW The public will probably finally find out that the Feds probably secretly installed REMOTELY controlled "self destruct" mechanisms on all the airliners after 911, in the eventuality that one might "have to be taken down" remotely BY THEM in the event of a perceived threat to national security. The F-16's are just for show, I'm sure. They likely would take an airliner out remotely if they thought they needed to and either falsely "admit" to "shooting it down" and try to justify "shooting it down" or claim "a terrorist bomb took it down". ANYTHING except admitting and revealing that they had the ability to take ANY airliner out with a remotely sent signal.

I'm guessing it will probably take our enemies discovering and finding out how to trigger an airliner's self-destruct mechanism for the Feds to finally remove them from airliners.

Your automobile now has the mechanism for the "authorities" to remotely shut it down without having the need to engage in a "pursuit". It amazes me that they have not whole heartedly and universally invoked and exercised that power. They probably enjoy the thrill of the chase.

So the fighter jets were to blow the plane out of the sky if the passenger happened to be a terrorist who wanted to blow the plane out of the sky?

@AINITFUNNY Haha, um, no. Conspiracy much?

I guess everyone forgot that on 9/11 airliners were hijacked TO RAM THEM INTO BUILDINGS, not to blow up in the air. Shooting one down with fighter jets, if it came to that, would be the lesser of two evils if such a scenario were to occur again.

It is only a matter of time before homeland security realises that some threats are simply not credible and a waste of public resources and public funds. A lot of the money used can be used to repay public debt.

Are they serious????? for ch--- sake. Sending fighters to shoot down a commercial airliner? Over the east coast and all kinds of cities or the west coast over a few large ones?

Arm the flight crew with tasers if this is such a problem.

This government is getting dummer by the day. :td:

While I certainly have been over the limit and needed to go to the toilet and been standing in line as the seat belt sign has come on when I have been ordered to sit down by an FA. So - do I wet myself or ignore them, hmmmmmm, let me think, ignored her and him, and the purser/CSD and said if they wanted they could hold the door open and watch, told me it was for my "safety", told them that as there are 3 of them they can have it verbally that I accept all responsibility and they still would not have it. Told them to get the captain and I would explain to him, they ring him up and just as they did the seat belt sign went off, door opens, I go in. Got a few frosty stares but that was it. I realise now that I could have been on the wrong end of an F-16 !

First, unless I missed something there was never any suspicion that someone was trying to hijack this plane. The issue was just a drunk and unruly passenger.

Second, the odds of a plot like that ever working again are slim to nill. The reason 9/11 happened was not (based on past hijackings) the policy was to cooperate with the hijackers and assume the planes would be taken somewhere and held for ransom. One needs look no further than UA93 to see that the paradigm has changed. Ever since 9/11, the new assumption is that everyone on board a hijacked plane is going to die anyway and therefore crew and pax are willing to take action to prevent the terrorists from achieving their objectives. Combine reinforced flight deck doors with the fact that anyone trying to hijack a commercial airliner is going to have 200+ people trying to physically prevent them from even reaching the door and odds against a 9/11 style attack ever happening again become astronomical. I suspect even al Qeada has figured this out which is why they have not attempted that style of attack again.