Something I still can’t understand:
HIS TARGET WAS SNOW AND GRANITE..???
Why not a densely populated CITY..?
He only had to wait 30 minutes....
Opportunity.
The pilot left the cockpit that was his moment, the second he failed to respond to ATC it was over.
I think if he waited too long that he feared the pilot could get help to break in. With a slow decent into a high peak, the locked out pilot wouldn’t resort to any consequential, brash efforts in time.
Kind of like slowly raising the temperature on a live frog...
Maybe he had to take the opportunity when it presented itself. He had to be alone. Therefore he had to wait until the other pilot left the cockpit.
The pilot maybe wouldn't have had to go the bathroom or meet the passengers for public appearance purposes for the rest of the flight.
He took his window of opportunity to do what he did.
People are missing something:
He could have locked the door after the pilot exited when he did.
The pilot can electronically send a “door open” request from the bulkhead using the proper code entry, but the person INSIDE can toggle lever to “reject request”.
The door then remains locked for 5 full minutes before another request can be re-sent from outside.
He then could simply continue to reject those requests each 5 minutes, ad infinitum until SHOT DOWN or until he found a richer target.
THE QUESTION REMAINS:
WHY CHOOSE SNOW TARGET OVER A CITY TARGET..?
Or the plane was diverted through remote control to the mountains.
Black ops have their uses.