[nmh]

It simply doesn't make sense - the ocean!

Gimme a break!

Trashing a city with airplane debris, killing MORE people, MORE disruption and doing damage to our economy by hitting, say the financial district in LA, NYC or people who work FOR the government ... now that would make more sense than exploding in the ocean.

[goldfinch]

I read that they wanted to explode the planes at the same time. That would lead me to believe they were going to do it over the ocean as it would be difficult to find 9 (or 10 or whatever) planes leaving from the UK and landing in the US at the same time. A couple of more points...Passengers would be required to be seated and belted in when approaching the US city, which would have required the explosive to be mixed earlier and stored somewhere so it could be detonated at the last moment. Waiting would increase the chances of it being found. And, last, the planes would be at a lower altitude as they got over the city they were to land in...so the pressure would be less...and the chance of the plane surviving a small explosion would be greater.

Now I don't know what was going on in the mind of the terrorists, but I think there are some good reasons that they might have exploded them over the ocean.