[Bloody Sam Roberts]

If this is true, it is very bad.

Could we have been played like the proverbial 'fiddle'?

Imagine that 9/11 was Phase 1. They attack us with airliners that are taken over by passengers (terrorists) after take off.
As expected by Al Qaeda, we go with the first knee jerk response...we redesign and reinforce the cockpit doors.

Now comes Phase 2...trained airline pilots that are actually moles for Al Qaeda take the planes off course and because of the barricaded, reinforced doors, there isn't thing 1 we can do about it.

Except perhaps have the Air Force shoot down any such aircraft. Which in my estimation means the bad guys win either way.

In this type of scenario, if it is played properly, it would be too late for us to do anything or scramble any interceptors. Imagine such a pilot complaining of non-existent 'control surface problems'. How long do you wait to find out if it's on the up and up before fragging the plane?

[My Favorite Headache]

Merry Christmas Everyone! That might not be Santa's sleigh in the sky coming at you in a few days.

[rintense]

The irony is, they would be once again using our freedoms (and laws) against us. Would passengers know if a plane were off course? I'm assuming ATCs would know by their radars, and could then alert the gov't to scramble jets. Either way, this is actually a win-win scenario for AQ- they take out more innocents, no matter how few or many.

[07055]

We predicted this scenario as soon as Mineta the Moron said "In reinforced doors we trust." Of course, we can't let our American pilots have guns---they might abuse them and shoot off their foot.

[thoughtomator]

If something like this happens we will drop our no-bias-against-Muslims stance so fast, they'll be wearing garters in Mecca.

[oceanview]

all foreign flights into the US from middle eastern airlines (and some others) should be halted, period. let them fly into canada and let the passengers connect there to come to the US.

[SeeRushToldU_So]

Man this is Clancey type stuff and it sucks.

Who do we nuke if it happens?

[LikeLight]

Not liking reference to "rural area" in east as potential target. Very odd when mixed with reference to large crowd concentrations. Other than a college football stadium (seasons now over), where do you find large crowds in rural areas in the east in the middle of winter?

[oceanview]

we already saw this happen with that Egypt Air flight, except he only crashed the plane into the sea rather then into a building.

[TAP ONLINE]

Hmmm al-Qaida? Moslems? Pilots? Moslem Pilots.
ban Moslem Pilots? Watch them?
Oh not PC. Smart but not PC.
Solution: :"Round up the usual suspects"
Search those Nuns , Kids. Check out that wheelchair.

[Palladin]

Don't forget that Egyptian pilot who deliberately took a whole planeload of people to their deaths on an Egypt Air flight a cuple of years ago. (Was it before 9-11?) He was praying to Allah all the way down.

[luvbach1]

Real pilots flying foreign planes on terrorist missions to the US would be diabolical indeed. Hard to believe muslims so fanatical as to train as pilots only to be suicide bombers. Or would they be recruited from within muslim pilots?

[jolie560]

Another likely scenario is a few female suicide bombers in a populated area--Rockefeller Center/Fifth Ave/St.Patrick's Cathedral.

[FairOpinion]

Egyptair Flight 990 -- Oct. 31, 1999.

Crash was ruled to be caused by the pilot's suicide.

At that time, we weren't think along the line of committing suicide to deliberately kill other people.

Maybe that was a "prototype exercise".


"But there was outrage in Cairo at the claim that the Islamic el shahada prayer - believed to have been uttered by the relief pilot before the autopilot was disengaged, was a prelude to suicide and the deaths of all 217 on board. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/egyptair/article/0,2763,196588,00.html

[JimSEA]

The Eygpt Air co-pilot comes immediatly to mind. H could have dumped the plane in a city had he killed the pilot during take off. I am sure the terrorist have at least thought of this senario.

[FairOpinion]

"New intelligence indicates that al-Qaida remains intent on attacking large gatherings of people with chemical or biological weapons, official said. They said law enforcement agencies were looking closely at two rural locations — one in the East and the other in the Southwest — that were believed to be high on the terrorist target list.

Most troubling, the officials sad, were indications that al-Qaida may already possess a radiological weapon, or so-called “dirty bomb.” They did not elaborate."


===

Large gathering, outside, good weather, thousands of people: New Year's Day Rose Bowl & Rose Parade in Pasadena.
Also televised, viewed by millions around the world.

I am surprised these aren't mentioned -- in a way, I think they aren't mentioned precisely because they are targets.

[Pro-Bush]

Bump/Ping!

[Metternich]

Al-Q also looking to recruit caucasian operatives from sympathetic orgranizations like ANSWER, IAC and the WWP.

[witnesstothefall]

The U.S. revokes visas of 17 pilots who fly the Caracas-Miami route for Venezuelan airline
AP ^ | Dec 19, 2003

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1043695/posts

[Lokibob]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1043695/posts

 

The U.S. revokes visas of 17 pilots who fly the Caracas-Miami route for Venezuelan airline

[LenS]

Even without the reinforced doors, how would the passengers or stewardesses even know that there was a problem until seconds before impact? Under those conditions, passengers would have no time to do anything. Once you get a suicide agent as a pilot, the only way to stop it is with air defense. But even an F-16 is useless against a suicide jet that picks a target along it's general flight path -- not enough time to react.

The only real solution is to fire all Muslim pilots and to ground all Islamic national airlines.

That being said, the pilots should be armed (if they choose to be).