I know I am going to upset someone with this posting, but this question has been bugging me all night.
The plane carrying Stewart and five passengers has (had) been termed a "ghost plane" because it was flying on auto-pilot basically until it ran out of gas and fell to earth. Two military aircraft followed it
and were able to report that the crew was
unresponsive and the windows were iced indicating loss of pressure. Basically, it was determined that those inside had died.
Now, my question is why they allowed that plane to basically fly on its own until it ran out of gas? We know it landed in a field and no one on the ground was injured, but how could anyone know that? In discussion with friends, we wondered if it was ever discussed to somehow shoot the plane down or follow some other method of sending it into the ground where one could be more sure it would not land in a populated area.
I ask this because what if the plane had run out of fuel over Fargo or another town and crashed to earth in the middle of the main street?
Could the FAA actually track, through gas consumption and flight path, where this plane would fall? If not, why take the chance of a plane nosediving into someone's home?
Anyone know the laws or rules to this kind of problem? Was stopping the plane even an option they could have considered?
My apologies for the length, but I really went round and round with friends on this one last night.
I don’t know if this is a possible answer or not but if the plane runs out of gas, crashes, and hits someone it could be considered an “act of God”. If the military shoots it down and it hits someone, the US government could be sued.
Fly alongside parallel at 600 mph, toss a rope with a magnet on it, have someone climb across and try to break in the door? Sorry, this is real life, not a James Bond movie (new one opening in a few weeks.)
Get the secret codes that override the autopilot and steer it in for a landing by remote control? Sorry, this ain’t a Star Trek movie.
The only option would be to shoot it down. If it were heading for a metropolitan area, they could have shot it down over a rural area before it got close to the city. I presume they could plot its trajectory and estimate it’s fuel consumption.
The drama here is that with all our technology, there are times when we’re just helpless.
Check the news reports. Shooting down the plane was in fact an option. It never became necessary because it never got too close to a population center. Because it was not known whether the occupants were dead or simply incapacitated, shooting it down preemptively or for target practice would have been bad form.
Also, realize that a plane bereft of fuel is a (slightly) less dangerous thing to fall out of the sky than a plane with burning fuel.
I suspect the military did exactly the right thing here.
I can’t find anything now, but one of the news sites yesterday (I think ABC but it might have been CNN) quoted someone from the Air Force as saying they had considered forcing the plane down to prevent it hitting a populated area but that it was not neccessary in this case. They did have jets pacing it for almost the entire trip.
I’ll dig around in the back stories on the ABC and CNN sites and see if I can find the quote.
“Drink your coffee! Remember, there are people sleeping in China.”
I can’t find anything now, but one of the news sites yesterday (I think ABC but it might have been CNN) quoted someone from the Air Force as saying they had considered forcing the plane down to prevent it hitting a populated area but that it was not neccessary in this case. They did have jets pacing it for almost the entire trip.
I’ll dig around in the back stories on the ABC and CNN sites and see if I can find the quote.
“Drink your coffee! Remember, there are people sleeping in China.”
And yes, knowing when it took off and projecting the flight plan would have given them a pretty good idea of where it would come down. You have to write the amount of fuel in the aircraft on your flight plan.
To answer the OP, the reason it was allowed to crash on it’s own was that the odds of hitting anything in the midwest is slim, even by mere chance. In fact, taking the US as a whole, the odds of any random object hitting a populated area is pretty slim.
By following the track the plane was taking, it was even more remote that this would happen, since the Dakotas and Canada around there are not temming populated areas.
And if the military did have to shoot it down, how much you wanna bet that:
(1) There’d be lawsuits from the relatives of the people on board. Right now, we know how it all ended up, but if it’d been shot down over the countryside, the lawyers could always argue that there was still a chance for the pilots to regain consciousness and land the aircraft. And the relatives would just know that would have happened, and say as much in between sobs on CNN (you have to have faith). Their sense of “closure” would have been taken away by the big, bad, Airforce - the emotional pain and suffering might be worth billions.
(2) If the wreckage from shooting it down hit anyone on the ground, the Airforce would be sued by the families.
(3) The conspiracy wackos would be coming out of the woodwork claiming the a/f shot it down while knowing that people on board were OK because one of them had conclusive proof that a/f shot down TWA800 and was about to go public. They’d eventually make enough noise to force a multi-million dollar investigation to be conducted at your and my expense.
Of course, if they didn’t shoot it down and it fell on somebody anyway, I guess they could then be sued for not shooting it down. But on the balance, I think they’re at less legal and PR risk by letting nature take its course as they did here. And as somebody mentioned, the chance of it hitting anything major is pretty slim, and they had some rough idea where it’d end up.
The Air Force doesn’t fire on anything without a whole lot of approvals and checks and cross-checks. Before they would ever shoot down an occupied civilian aircraft they would have to be 1) absolutely certain that it represented an imminent (clear and present) danger and 2) there were absolutely no alternative and 3) that, even then, shooting at it would do some good. As near as I can tell, none of those conditions were met.
The presumption that the passengers and crew were dead wouldn’t be sufficient reason to treat the aircraft as if it were unoccupied. Presumed dead is not the same as dead.
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A civilian aircraft that poses a non-hostile threat (in other words, they aren’t dropping bombs, but for reasons beyond their control, they are a threat) can only be shot down on the direct order of the President.
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Correct me if I’m wrong (I realize I don’t need to say that…) but I seem to recall learning that the government has to consent to be sued. You can’t just sue the government if they screw up. Hence no Vietnam wrongful death suits. No gulf war disease settlement. No Challenger witness mental anguish suits.
Ravenous is right. There aren’t many cases in which the government consents to be sued. If somebody gave an illegal order to shoot down a plane, they could be prosecuted on criminal grounds, but chances are there agency would not be sued.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
Manhattan: Using a driver doesn’t appear to be any better choice. News from KGO Radio this morning was a MUNI (metro bus system in San Francisco) driver who caused an accident, putting one man in hospital with serious leg injuries, was drunk while driving the bus!