BBC are reporting an unnamed source saying that a known terrorist suspect was believed to be trying to board BA223 (which has been cancelled for the past two days).
This is unconfirmed officially, and I take Jadagul’s points about the reasons for cancelling flights, but surely if the authorities have information of this level then the person in question would be arrested? It’s not like cancelling the flights isn’t going to tip him off if he is really a threat.
OK… fine… the plane goes into autopilot and no one on board can touch the controls… how in the hell are you going to land it? Yes, “autoland” capabilities do exist, but not on every jet, and not at every airport, and it has to be programmed in - how are you going to do that if you have a software lockout? And that’s leaving aside the problem of what happens if another airplane gets in your path? Or a flock of geese? You’ve just lost the option of making evasive manuvers. You may have stopped a hijacking, but you’ve just enormously increased the risk of a major accident. Is that really a gain?
(BTW - I’m told by an airline captain I know that there’s already a PIN of sorts required to open the door, with in-cockpit overides. He would not give me all the details (which is fine by my reckoning) but it sounded pretty effective and would allow emergency access to the cockpit if the problem wasn’t hijacking but incapacitated pilots)
Look up “sarcasm” in the dictionary.
We still have allies? :dubious:
Since our government keeps us ignorant of the really juicy information (if it even exists) we don’t have much else, do we? (and yes, some information should not be public - which information is another debate) Anyhow, it’s just kicking thoughts around - no, I don’t expect we’re going to solve anything here, but I (unlike our current administration in Washintong) am interested in what other people think about current events.
Ale, between the interviews with people on TV and talking to several pilots I know who’ve been intercepted, I’d say the reaction is all over the board on that one. Some people do find it enormously stressful. Others (for reasons I can’t fathom) find it reassuring 
I’m assuming the latter find the presence of Authority reassuring, but I don’t think they’ve really thought through the potential implications of having F-16’s flying formation with a passenger jet. Me, I don’t want to become “collateral damage”, thank you very much.
Yes and no - standard intercept procedures can (and do) include making visual contact with those in the cockpit, which would require flying close enough to the jet for the passengers to potentially see the fighters. Afterwards, yes, one or both might drop back behind the aircraft for escort duty. I seem to recall some passenger interviews where they mentioned seeing the fighters. Certainly, on the small planes intercepted any passengers aboard will be able to see the Nice Young Men flying alongside.
On a certain level, being intercepted is similar to being pulled over by a state trooper on the highway. A major difference, of course, is that these “troopers” have machine guns or air-to-air missiles or whatever they’re hanging off F-16’s, etc. these days. On the other hand, police patrolling freeways are armed, too, and authorized to shoot in certain circumstances. On the third hand, people are wiggy about aviation, especially these days.
There have been a LOT of intercepts since 9/11/01. I find it reassuring that no one has seen a need to shoot anything down. I hope things stay that calm.
From the New York Times this morning, this is not a surprising development.
Uh, yeah, I kind of saw those questions coming…
Well, that answers one of the questions raised on this board - assuming this “official” is actually in the know.
I keep wondering if Al Qaeda ups their chatter to get us to do these things without really intending an attack at this time. Look at all the disruption they’ve caused without risking a valuable, highly trained operative!
I don’t think that can be true, it isn’t all BA flights that have been cancelled, just one particular flight. And the passengers from that flight were accomodated on a later BA flight I believe.
Pilots aren’t some monolithic category that agree on all matters. Armed air marshalls have been a controversial issue in Britain. It may well be that the pilots for the particular cancelled flight in question were adamantly opposed to armed law officers on board while other pilots on that route either swallowed their objections or were in favor of it.
Or something else is going on which we have no information about.
Given the recent track record of the US government in this department it seems to me the Three Stooges could do better. Remember WMD? Remember the many people who have been arrested and held and later proved to be totally innocent of anything? Frankly, I have a very hard time relying on the US government being competent and capable in this department.
I have to admit the alternative, shooting it down, takes care of the landing part pretty well. :rolleyes:
So you have a plane which has been hijacked. I think it might be better to put it in autopilot in the hopes the pilots can recover control than to shoot it down right away. You are always in time to shoot it down. Furthermore, the PIN system takes care of airliners which may have been hijacked and the hijack gone unnoticed to the authorities.
I have also seen proposals that would program into an airplane’s computers where it could go or not go. Any attempt to enter prohibited airspace would be denied by the computer.
It seems the US government has displayed its usual lack of tact with the matter of requiring armed police on board airliners traveling to the USA. Some countries northern European countries have rejected the idea and are trying to work out some mutually accetable solution. Curiously, the French have said it’s a great idea and they have no problems with it. The UK seems to not be so enthusiastic. The Spanish government is peeved because the USA notified the airline Iberia without even bothering to notify the Spanish government. True to their role of puppets and lapdogs the Spanish government has not issued any public declarations but they say they are in “talks”.
I know what I know because I’ve taken the time to ask people who are directly involved. It corresponds to what the government infers with recent events. It’s all well-and-good to wax opinion and belittle a government. Opinion has always been the gift that keeps on flinging. But there is no way anyone on this board has a fraction of the knowledge that a government possesses. Any statement that infers greater knowledge is false.
I don’t know if British crews are responsible for the canceled flights or not, I have zero contact with BA people. The most I can hope for is 3rd party info. The problem with incoming flights is that the rest of the world is lagging in security. The recent wheel well incident from a major airport is a wake-up call.
There have been repeated attempts at gathering information about airlines and airline security. The fact that it continues and includes a fair number of people means there is intent on carrying something out. 9/11 was the 2nd attempt to bring down the WTC and it was 10 years after the first attempt.
First of all, no one is shooting down anything “right away”. Despite some rather provacative incidents over the past couple years no one has been even shot at much less shot down over the continental US.
There are actually several problems involved in a 9/11/01 hijacking, not the least of which the question of whether or not any of the flight crew was killed in the takeover, and how many. If all the on-duty pilots are dead and no one alive knows the PIN you’re screwed even if you have another qualified live pilot on board.
The other thing is that if some other, non-hijacking crisis is occurring it may not be a good thing to require entry of that PIN. Unless the system is somehow intelligent enough to NOT activate during severe turbulence, evasive manuvers, or major malfunctions locking the pilots out of the controls, even briefly, could be extremely hazardous or even fatal.
My information is that there IS a PIN system in use to control access to the cockpit, so the idea has some good use, but locking out the controls strikes me as a very, very bad idea.
You know, I heard those proposed, too, and the universal reaction among pilots has been quite negative on a visceral level.
First of all, the “forbidden zones” are quite large, and often encompass considerable open space as well as being near normal air routes. In an emergency requiring an immediate landing, the best choice might, in fact, be within the forbidden zone - by denying the pilot the option to land there in an emergency you might turn a survivable accident into a fatal one. (There has been at least one emergency landing into a “temporary flight restiction” that I am aware of, so this is not far-fetched)
Second, not all airplanes have computers on board. The ones I fly certainly don’t. There are still commercial jets in service that do not have electronic on-board computers.
Third, airplanes can and do fly without electrical power, but computers do not function without it. Disabling the electrical system would disable this computer-controlled “lock-out” system, allowing the pilot to enter into the prohibited area.
Fouth, many of the “forbidden zones” are temporary to one degree or another - the one over the Chicago Loop, for instance, comes and goes. How would this system know when it’s in effect and when it isn’t?
And fifth, what do you do if the system malfunctions and starts to consider everything forbidden or otherwise act unpredictably? Because systems do fail and they do malfunction.
I have many qualms about taking control away from the pilot(s). This is not just a bias from being in the cockpit myself - I also fly radio control airplanes and in principal I have nothing against remote piloting. But there are problems with these various plans to remove control from the guy(s) up front and give it to someone or something else. Despite our most sophisticated technologies, when it comes to flying passengers or cargo we still have a human in the loop because when the crap hits the fan it’s the human element that’s going to come up with a novel approach for unforeseen circumstances.
That viewpoint is probably behind at least some of the objections to armed sky marshalls - it adds a dangerous element that is not under the control of the pilot. Pilots are trained to be in control at all times, and have legal responsibility for everything that happens during the flight. Now you’re talking about removing that control in various ways - of course there’s a lot of resistance. And there might be some wisdom in listening to the folks who are in the front seat on a day-to-day basis. They are, after all, most famillar with the operating environment and potential problems thereof. Desk jockeys can think up all the clever ideas they want, but they don’t have the real-world experience to judge how practical or safe some of those ideas are.
On a very basic level, that’s why pre-9/11/01 air traffic controllers used to periodically take a ride in the cockpit, and pilots could get free and extensive tours of air traffic control facilities - the two halves of the team work better when they have some real sensory input regarding the work environment of the other party. Now, though, we have folks coming up with clever ideas (some of which have merit, or could be developed into practical ideas) without checking with the folks who have to make these changes work. Very frustrating, all around. They have also, by the way, stopped these cross-over visits, which I feel will be detrimental in the long term.
No, I don’t have it now. I don’t get it. How in the name of all that’s holy am I, as a United States citizen, safer in any way now that Saddaam Huesein has been captured? I don’t feel any safer, but I never felt unsafe, either. I regarded that man as being absolutely no threat to me or mine and I don’t believe he was, or ever would have been. I do believe that our Fearless Leader is more of a threat to my safety than Saddam.
Armed air marshals; that also disturbs me. Are they armed with fire arms?, AFAIK that is so; a fire arm on a pressurized cabin is a Very Bad Thing indeed, fuselages are not bulletproof, and an astray bullet could easily destroy an airplane. Besides, what´s the point of fire arms? if there was a risk of terrorist boarding with fire arms themselves I´d understand, but I find quite hard to belive that such guns could be smugled when even nail clippers are being screened.
So, why the need of a fire arm then?, would they shoot terrorist across the fuselage?, what kind of arms would the bad guys be holding that merit long range engagment? A fire arm against a box cutter is quite an overkill, and posseses a big risk, hijackers wouldn´t even need to carry arms themselves, they could seize the marshals.
According tothis article in today’s Observer, BA will not fly any services with armed guards on board.
Ale - according to defenders of the armed marshalls idea, the firearms carried would fire low velocity ammo which would not pierce the fuselage if hitting it. The other objections that you note have been raised by pilot’s organisations and other opponents of the idea, especially on this side of the Atlantic, where it isn’t automatically assumed that the best answer to any problem is to give someone a gun 
US skymarshalls are armed with guns, yes. So are Isreal’s. Other countries have mentioned using other weapons, like tasers. but all nations tend to be a bit mum on the details (with good reason).
There seems to be a perception out there that the skymarshalls use a gun as a first solution and it’s the wild west up there. This is incorrect. Marshalls are trained to use other techniques besides shooting, reserving that as a last resort. There was a recent incident where a passenger attacked a skymarshall (punching him and, if I recall, attempting knee him in the groin) and no shots were fired, the woman was restrained by other means. So no, no one is turning the skies into a shooting gallery.
This has been discussed before on the SDMB - a bullet can NOT “easily destroy a plane” Air combat is full of stories of airplanes riddled with bullet holes and pieces of the wings and tails shot off coming in for landing with all aboard surviving. Airliners possess triple-redundant systems - even if a bullet took out a hydraulic steering line, there are two more capable of taking over the task.
A bullet could depressurize a plane, and that I think is the real issue here. I do not fly pressurized airplanes myself, and I do not present myself as having much knowledge of them. I have heard a lot of folks with experience of such planes maintain that while a bullet hole could cause a plane to depressurize, it will not be an “explosive” decompression. At most, it would get really windy inside, the overhead oxygen masks would drop, the pilot would dive to a lower altitude, and that’s about it. I’ve also been told that on a really large aircraft like a 747 the pressurization equipment might even be able to “keep up” with the airflow out of a bullet hole so there would be no noticable drop in interior pressure. (You have to know that a pressurized airplane is not hermetically sealed - there is outside air coming in, and inside air going out, all the time. What makes it pressurized is that the air is coming in faster than it’s going out)
Maybe we’ll have someone with better knowledge than mine in that area explain it all better.
Well, the US had two airplane stowaways in one week last month, obviously security is not perfect. And that’s why there’s so much concern about foreign airlines - our government believes those airlines have less effective security than ours. (Yes, another debatable topic…) There is concern that weapons could be smuggled aboard at a foregin location
If they felt the situation called for it, yes. In fact, they train for just such a scenario in airplane cabin mock-ups. They are held to a very high standard of marksmanship. They use ammunition that is capable of taking down a human being but minimally likely to fully penetrate the fuselage wall.
I don’t know - would you feel more comfortable with a sky marshall engaged in close-in knife fighting with a hijacker? I’d prefer the Good Guys to be better armed than the Bad Guys myself. Let’s be real - I’d prefer that we lived in a world where this sort of planning wasn’t required, but that, unfortunately, is not reality.
First they’d have to identify which of those on board were air marshalls. Then they’d have to disarm a trained law officer. That’s an unarmed or minimally armed person trying to take the gun of someone who is trained to use it and use it well. Keep in mind, too, that the passengers will most likely ally with the sky marshall, meaning the hijackers will be outnumbered.
Which is not to say I’m wildly enthusiastic about the sky marshall program myself. I think the idea has some merits and some uses. I also agree that it’s best to avoid trouble by stopping the Bad Guys on the ground. But those who maintain that sky marshalls are not necessary because we have ground-based security are letting their hopes and desires blind them to the reality we can’t account for every clever idea someone else thinks up.
I think the best improvement in security so far has been improved cockpit doors. You want to keep the pilots safe so they can keep control of the airplane in order to avoid what happened 9/11/01. Everything else aside from that, it’s not nearly so certain if those are good ideas or not.
It is ironic that the British have refused while the French have gone along with the “suggestion”. Maybe this is a European plot to confuse President Bush even further as to who is on what side of this mess. He must be confused when his trusted friend Patsy refuses to follow orders. Maybe we will we see the presidents of France and the USA saying to Tony Blair
(With my apologies to Monty Python.)
Am quite loathe to jump to Tony Blair’s defense, but just to clarify that British Airways are a private company and can do what they want!
The suggestion from the UK Government was that Sky Marshalls be placed on services where there had been intelligence of a specific threat to that flight. BA’s (quite reasonable) view is that, if there is intelligence of a specific threat to a flight, that flight will not be leaving the groud, so the question of Sky Marshalls is redundant.
Well, yes, British Aitways is a private company but there is no doubt in my mind that Her Majesty’s Government can and does have a lot of power over them by the mere fact that they can pass laws. Yes, BA always has the option of refusing to fly if it has to meet certain conditions but that might mean going out of business pretty fast. Normally the government would try to negotiate on behalf of the airline with the foreign government. Governments across Europe have been involved in this matter and I suppose it is no different with the British government. I doubt they are staying out and telling BA they’re on their own.
There’s certain logic to that but what do you do if the threat is against the airlines itself? Shut down all flights? Also, if the threat were completely identifiable then the people responsible would simply be detained. The threat represents a possibility, not a certainty.
This type of response plays into the terrorist hands and will more than likely result in the withholding of intelligence information from other countries.
The end result will be a flight with a terrorist and no Air Marshall. I’m not sure what the Captain is trained to do but you can’t phone in a problem like that and have it resolved internally. It would be nice if the passengers on a BA flight were given the same security as the Queen if it was warranted.
Magiver, if I’m reading you correctly, you are suggesting that, if airlines continue to refuse to fly planes that intelligence suggests have had specific threats against them, then the response of the US Government will be to refuse to pass on this intelligence?
Your assumption being that it is safer to be in the air, on a plane with several armed men, than on the ground, sitting in an airport?
sailor
You think that the Government will pass a law requiring planes to take off, even if there has been intelligence of a threat against them?
To re-iterate what was in the original cite, the British Government’s proposal was that if intelligence identified a specific threat against a flight then Sky Marshalls could be placed on that flight. BA’s position was that, if intelligence identified a specific threat against a flight, then that flight would not be allowed to take off until it was condsidered secure. Therefore, the fact that a Sky Marshall would be considered a necesary measure on a particular flight would mean that that flight wouldn’t be going anywhere anyway.
I don’t know where you get that. The US government has decreed that flights coming into the USA need to have armed police onboard or they will not be allowed. The UK government could go along and require that from their airlines and it has refused to do so like a couple of other scandinavian countries. Spain has put the idea on hold pending talks. France on the other hand has accepted it and is requiring its airline to comply. How can it be said that this is strictly between the airline and the USA? I don’t think so. certain governments are agreeing and some are not and it has implications.
On 9/11/01 the US grounded all airplanes in their airspace in response to a direct and very real threat.
After a couple days, cooler heads realized that it would not be practical to maintain our current economy without aviation.
Our current situation is a result of attempting to balance our needs and desires for air commerce with safety and security. It’s not a perfect solution, and I expect more tweaking in the future.
It is a fact that Americans are, on average, more comfortable with the notion of people carrying guns than many other countries. So, in principal, I have no problem with our government suggesting skymarshalls, someone disagreeing with the notion, then everyone sitting down at a table and utilizing a diplomatic tool called “compromise”
Unfortunately, those in power in DC regard “compromise” as a dirty word.
So… here’s the problem: there are threats out there (let’s accept that as a fact for the moment). What’s the best response? Armed guards - or not flying? I could probably argue it either way with the limited knowledge I have right now.