rmadisonwi

Helpful for what? Whoever has GE would be able to use GE lines or kiosks, where available, at whatever the relevant airport is for whatever flight they wind up taking back to the US.

It's not going to get you out of a security investigation any faster. I'm sure passengers being rebooked are done based on airline status, destination/routing availability, etc.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what good Global Entry will do other than get them through immigration faster when they land at ORD, which it would do regardless of the incident happening or not.

milepig

I don't know how much of this to believe, but one of the local Chicago TV stations (NBC) interviewed pax as they finally deplaned at ORD. Among the things said is that the FAs said something about "notes were found in a Lav, would the person responsible please come forward". Not surprisingly, that had no result. They then said they'd later been told that a similar message had been found in a 2nd lav. I don't think I'd heard that before. The last thing said was that the handwriting sample produced "no results" (again, no big surprise) and then everyone eventually got back on the plane.

bocastephen

It's always "out of an abundance of caution". Wake me up when they start trying "out of abundance of common sense" instead.

EricH

But idiots who deserve to be prosecuted, sued for the cost of the diversion, and banned for life do.

Imstevek

I'm genuinely curious what you think they should have done?

bocastephen

Assuming passengers and their bags were properly screened at FCO, I don't see anything else was needed. I agree the guilty party should be found, but since there is no practical way to do this, everything else is just showmanship "out of an abundance of caution". Terrorists with sophisticated explosives that can be brought around or through airport security don't leave crazy notes, and crazy people who leave notes, don't have sophisticated explosives.

11yaa

adambrau

We are now trained. "If you see something, say something". Agree that people who might seek to bring down a plane don't leave advance notes. But for that 1 in 1 billion cases where it happens, UA would be done for by continuing the flight and then a disaster occurred. PA103 followed weeks after a threat called into the Helsinki embassy and several prominent people reportedly switched off.

bocastephen

True, but I think it's more complicated when you start thinking about the possibilities....if the terrorist is real, and onboard, what will they do when they realize the flight is being diverted? Detonate the bomb? Give up? If someone calls in a threat in advance, I would hope there are mechanisms in place to filter out the source to determine if it needs further action or likely a hoax, but leaving a random note on a flight, which may or may not be the flight the note writer is on, is less likely to be real vs a hoax. Dumping the flight is one answer - what about cargo? Did they screen that at SNN? If not, why?

To me, when they look only at passengers and bags, it's more theater than realistic....if they dump everything and do a thorough inspection (like hours and hours of searching with dogs, going through fixed and removable components, catering carts, trash, etc), passenger bags, cargo and everything else, I would give them more of a pass because it's an honest attempt to leave no stone unturned to clear the aircraft and everything on it. Not to go back into the old TSS forum arguments, but when you focus 99% on passengers and bags and ignore most of everything else, I am really not impressed about the authority's real intentions.

TA

This is about as dumb as the case a couple of years ago where some mechanic drew the smiley face + "bye bye" in the cargo hold, and the flight attendants refused to fly and were fired for it.

trooper

Sounds good... how? When my ship was preparing to deploy for the Persian Gulf back in Oct 1990 ….a deployment which was public knowledge - we received numerous "bomb threat" calls from so called anti-war activists (funny how they didn't seem to care about the invasiuon of Kuwait by Iraq but whatever) trying to disrupt our departure....and yes we quickly started to ignore them..... but a warship is a difficult target for such things....and there was no "public" to worry about.... HOW do you cavalierly dismiss any possible threat against hundreds of "civilians"?

bocastephen

Life comes with risks - we need to balance risk against safety, but besides that, I answered in my post - if the authorities feel the threat is credible, then search everything, not just passengers and their bags. If there is reasonable concern of a bomb on board, I expect to see the aircraft and every component turned upside down in the search, otherwise I would be hesitant to get back on board myself! If the threat is not really credible, and I put this note in that category, just move on. If someone told me they found a note on board, I wouldn't give it much thought - if someone told me a call from a suspect area overseas, or to an embassy or other official channel, was made targeting my flight with specifics, then I would expect better measures be taken than extra bag checks and silly questions. If someone cannot prove to me that all cargo was checked and all catering and service carts were physically inspected and dogs were taken throughout the cabin and cargo areas, then I might be inclined to skip that flight and find another way home.

I don't have much patience for govt stupidity, but that doesn't mean I'm careless or stupid myself.

adambrau

Agree that we have a lot of theater in aviation security and since the plane landed safely in SNN and then ORD, it was obviously a sick prank. But as we all know too well, commercial aviation has been targeted, sometimes with individuals indicating willingness to forgo their own lives to bring down a plane. I can only imagine that for many pax that must have been an unsettling diversion which fortunately ended only with a 24 hour delay.

WineCountryUA

Topic reminder

As this is the UA forum, we should focus on UA's response in this incident or UA handling of potential future incidents. Recent posts are drifting into OMNI or Travel Safety/Security

WineCountryUA
UA coModerator

Imstevek

That's a very reckless approach, which you can afford from your armchair. Using that perspective to be overly critical is just as reckless. Again, UA is damned if they do, damned if they don't. And they do enough wrong to be critical. In this case, not so sure.