Which if something bad would have happened it would be regarded as an "isolated event" and not considered terrorism.
The government will do its best to downplay a single incident as not being terrorism. However...if multiple events happen at the same time...they won't be able to squash it...just like the morning of 9-11....look what they did with the plane that dropped out of the sky over Long Island not too long after 9-11....immediately they said not terrorism...I am still not convinced that was not a shoe bomber.
If Reid had blown the plane up over the ocean and actually gotten away with it...they would have said mechanical failure...ala TWA 800.
The first thing to fall off that plane was the vertical stabilizer. And only that part. It was found over Jamaica Bay.
That would be impossible for a shoe bomber to accomplish unless he was hanging on to the tail outside the plane and put his foot on the vertical stabilizer joint.
Still amazes me how people desperately want that to have been a terrorist attack.