catocony

So, if a plane takes a lightening strike or something and looses coms, and it's night time so very difficult to tell who is in the cockpit, then that plane should be shot down?

If I'm a hajacker, here's an idea. Instead of hijacking a plane going from the East Coast to West, then turning the plane around, I hijack a plane flying from Boston to National. Via Flightaware, I know the flight plan, so I continue to follow that flight plan after I take over the cockpit. Or, I just leave the plane on autopilot. Regardless, I pop on the pilots jacket and hat and sit there and if some busybody in an F-16 flys by, I wave at him and signal that my coms are dead. But, I'm still on the flight plan, and communicating with the intercepting pilot.

Do I get shot down?

Badenoch

Of course it will be made. It's already happened. The U.S. Navy shot down a civilian airliner when it couldn't tell the difference between an F-14 and an Airbus. It didn't generate much outrage in America because the passengers were brown foreigners from a Muslim country. Their tough luck. The U.S. government awarded medals to the ship's crew and finally got around to offering compensation 8 years later and only after being taken to the International Court.

The plane that started this discussion was from Canada and the passengers were not American. Jets were sent to intercept the flight. Would America kill a planeload of my countrymen if it thought it would save American lives? It would be naïve to think it absolutely wouldn't under any circumstances.

84fiero

We get your ongoing outrage over Iran Air 655, so is it necessary to make it the center of every post, in this thread about domestic fighter escorts of airliners? Continually implying that Americans are all racist and our military is eager to kill civilian aircraft passengers of other nationalities, is kind of ridiculous.

In any case, imputing the same outcome on hypothetical future domestic fighter-escort scenarios doesn't make sense. While I personally doubt there will ever be a fighter-escort shoot-down, I suppose anything could happen given the right circumstances so I'd never say "never". Just very small odds.

HMO

But if one or both pilots are the bad guys?

ROCAT

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GUWonder

That is not the whole reason -- it is a part of the reason -- for these "escorts".

catocony

What if the fighter pilot is a terrorist? He could go on a strafing run down Broadway or fire missiles at whatever aircraft he wanted to.

What if the air traffic controller is a terrorist? He could set up a couple of planes to collide.

What if some random guy is a terrorist? He could park at the end of a runway and take shots at a full-loaded plane as it takes off.

HMO

None of your scenarios require jet fighter escort.

Bearcat06

And after the first WTC bombing, folks were saying it would never happen again. Guess what happened?

We've got fighters on stand-by now, ready to go at a minutes notice. We didn't have that when 9-11 happened.



Big difference btwn a small plane a Airbus.....

Bearcat06

The two pilots involved have stated multiple times since 9/11 they were prepared to ram if necessary.

WillCAD

Ooh! Ooh! I know the answer to this question:

It happened again in Oklahoma City a few years later. After that, government buildings began instituting AT standards for incoming vehicles. Civilian buildings, not so much.

For the record, the 9/11 attacks had absolutely NOTHING in common with the 1993 bombing except their target. Totally different threat vector.

It's my understanding that there have always been fighters on standby in the DC area, though it was more like a 30-minute standby prior to 9/11 and it's now more like a 5-minute stand-by. But AFAIK, there are not interceptors performing CAP over DC 24/7, nor are there pilots sitting in their cockpits with the engines revved on the tarmac, ready to take off at a moments notice, 24/7. Maverick is not on Ready Alert at Andrews.

THAT is exactly the kind of thinking that you're trying to be critical of. In point of fact, it's exactly the kind of thinking that led to 9/11. Nobody ever imagined that a hijacked civilian airliner could be used as a kamikaze weapon, except maybe Tom Clancy, and even he only got it half right (in Debt of Honor, the kamikaze plane wasn't hijacked, it was deliberately crashed by its pilot).

A small plane can, theoretically, pose a greater threat that its size implies, if the plane is loaded with explosives like a car bomb, or with chemical or biological or radiological agents which could be dispersed upon impact. Again, these scenarios have been bandied about in fiction for years.

catocony

Where? There have always been a few on alert, but the US is a pretty big place. If you have a fighter on alert in South Carolina, that doesn't do much for you if someone hijacks a plane taking off in Chicago.

As already covered in this thread, there were ANG fighters on alert on 9/11, and relatively close to DC. They didn't get anywhere close to the action that morning.

GUWonder

I am well aware of their words. But words don't mean as much as actions when it comes to the moment to either be or not be a kamikaze that takes out a civilian passenger plane whereby they decide to kill a lot of innocent people in pursuit of a "greater good". That last sentence makes the two pilots sound like they share a lot with terrorists since they say they were prepared to behave in a certain way which has a lot in common with the 9/11 terrorists too.

It didn't happen again.

A different group of terrorists went after the same building complex in a very different way.

FlyingHoustonian

We had that before and during 11 Sept 01 albeit at fewer locations around CONUS-Houston, Miami, near Boston, etc etc. Now there are a lot more.. The issue was not the alert locations or timing, as one can read in open source public info , it as the chain process, and intel, and FAA communication with NEADS, SEADS and NORAD.

paulwuk

Fighter escort of a QR flight into MAN today made a lot of noise (both in the media and in my living room).

Ironically the person who first reported it (with a photo, from the air no-less)

https://twitter.com/JoshHartley_

twittered just before boarding the flight 9 hours ago:
So what exactly was the point in that scan?