Posted on 04/11/2007 4:21:27 PM PDT by Cornpone
Tel Aviv - Israeli warplanes nearly shot down an American airliner carrying passengers from New York to Tel Aviv on Wednesday when the pilot failed to respond as the plane approached the Israeli coast, an airport authority official said.
Two Israeli F-15s and two F-16s fighter planes were scrambled to intercept a Boeing 777 operated by the US Continental Airlines as it prepared to enter Israeli airspace without responding to control tower demands to identify itself, the official added.
According to Israel's private Channel-10, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, defence minister Amir Peretz and General Gaby Ashkenazy, chief of staff, were warned that the air force was on the point of shooting down a civilian plane suspected of being in the hands of hijackers.
The Boeing pilot at the last minute realised the situation and the danger threatening his craft and established contact while still over the Mediterranean.
Escorted by the warplanes, the Boeing landed without further problems at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport where an inquiry was opened.
According to another story, the Israeli jets escorted the airliner away from Israel to the west until contact was reestablished. I doubt that they almost shot the plane down.
Nice to see the Israeli pilots are on guard, to bad the Continental pilot was not. Scary stuff!
if it had been shot down you can bet the gov. would blame a center fuel tank explosion or some such bullsh$t.
Perhaps they thought Nancy Pelosi was on board.
How soon will the passengers start legal proceedings against the pilot, crew, and Continental?
Only if they hit it in the center fuel tank and it exploded.
Remember the WTC was blown down.
There was no plane at the Pentagon.
The Earth is flat.
I have the feeling that a certain Continental Airlines pilot will soon be taking an early retirement.
USS Liberty, anyone?
What about it?
Don’t most commercial planes have a transponder they can squawk to identify themselves? Is there any way that transponder could be prompted from the ground, so as to avoid these kinds of mishaps? A “ping” is sent to the transponder, which responds with its own “ping.” Something like that?
ping
Thankfully nothing happened. A pilot is going to lose his job however.
Is Israel just as strong as the U.S.?
ATC assigns a transponder code that is set by the pilot on initial contact. Until the code is assigned and entered into the transponder, the aircraft is a blip on the radar without ID.
The headline in the original story this afternoon was
Fighter Jets Aid American Plane at Ben Gurion Airport.
It was pretty obvious, even in the first article that they weren’t there to “aid” but as a defensive measure.
I believe that Israel has another layer of verbal ID codes that are required to approach the airspace.
Well yes and no to your question. The plane was on their radar so the transponder was working; otherwise they wouldn’t have known what it was, but no, you can’t transpond any data from an airplane’s transponder from the ground.
Naw, just send him to radio school. "Ex-Captain, this is a microphone....."
Problem... is that a plane taken over by terrorists will still squawk "Friend".
Time for the pilots and everybody else to break out the cell phones and air phones (assuming phones would work like they did on 9/11 when so many people called from the hijacked planes).
Earth to pilot, Earth to pilot!
Whatever happened to Guard channel, AKA Navy Common?
Ain't it the truth. NATO common, too.
To squak or not to squawk. I think it depends on the terrorists intentions. It would probably make more sense to turn the transponder off so the plane can’t be that easily tracked. Of course this would result in a much quicker decision time to shoot the aircraft down if it was not squawking. Just depends on which crazy islamic nut is driving.
The poor guy probably dialed in the wrong freq. for approach. Result: no response to queries by plane or ground.
“I wonder why the radio is so quiet?”
remember it? if not, look it up....1967
I doubt the cell phones would work over the Mediterranean. There’s no cell towers there.
Yeah, I know about the USS Liberty incident. I just wanted you to explain how a tragic mistake that happened 40 years ago during a shooting war is related to this Continential pilot not (initially) responding to control tower demands to identify itself. ....and no one getting hurt.
‘Read about this earlier. Phew!
thank you
What I was wondering was if the transponder could be set to respond to a "request for information" from the tower, so that the pilot did not have to squawk it manually. I realize that the squawk won't identify friend from foe, but it would give the tower information about the aircraft without requiring pilot cooperation. Done correctly, it could tell the tower much, much more -- including the status of onboard personnel. A certain code entered into the sender could indicate to the tower that the plane is in a silent "alarm" mode, for example.
I'm no aeronautical electronics wiz, but it seems to me that a microprocessor could be programmed to respond with some minimal datastream if prompted by a poll from the ground on a certain frequency.
tragic mistake?????
Oh, I see you’re a conspiracy nutball. Carry on with your delusion.
Agreed.
But obviously, it it much more dramatic to say "almost shot down" by those nasty joos!
What's with airline pilots these days? Their quality seems to have gone south a few notches, judging from recent news stories.
actually I have a good memory.....if that is all you require to dismiss me as a “conspiracy nutball” I am very flattered.
The only “tragic mistake” in the USS Liberty matter was political.....not tactical or operational.
Looks like a thread hijacking in progress.
Israel was right in the middle of a (6-day) war for its very survival in '67, and tragic mistakes made under those circumstances are understandable.
I double dare you to debate Alan Colmes on those issues.
I don’t think the Israelis were having any trouble identifying the plane. There were having trouble identifying who was in control of the plane. When push comes to shove, if a plane is under the control of terrorists who plan to use it to plow into a densely populated area, the passengers have to be sacrificed.
There does need to be some back-up system for the pilot to use in case of communications equipment failure. Something visual that can be interpreted through the cockpit windows by fighter jets pulling up alongside.
I would be happy to. Any way I can get on the show?
And Global warming does exist.
Actually, based on what I have read, there is some degree of gobal warming. However, Mars is warming at basically the same rate Earth is. This indicates that perhaps activity on the sun may have a lot to do with this.
I’m guessing you haven’t flown in quite some time (based on your use of the term ‘’ARSA’’ - which was replaced with ‘’Class C airspace’’ well over a decade ago) but just to bring your comments up to date:
‘’Squawk’’ refers to setting your transponder to the code ATC assigned you. ‘’Ident’’ is the button you push at ATC’s request to make your aircraft light up on their rada scope.
If you’ll think back to your initial training, there are discrete transponder codes for various emergencies. 7700 indicates an emergency, 7600 indicates radio failure, and 7500 is a hijacking. Any pilot will learn these codes in the course of their initial training. Of course, if a hijacker were in control, he would be able to set any transponder code he wanted.
On a side note, unless you got in big trouble with the FAA at some point, you’re still a private pilot, just way out of currency.
All too true ...
ever since my retirement in 2000..
sky king
ping
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