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If you were going to use this aircraft to attack an East or West Coast city, and assuming you could run the tanks dry because you had full tanks in the back instead of pax, how far away could you stage from?

I assume (hopefully) you could not go from Canada or Mexico because you would get caught.

Assuming the BGs have this aircraft, could they spoof a real (approved) arriving flight until it was too late to stop them?

Could they make it all the way from Algeria?

Just a guess but a 727 set up like this would have a range or over 4,000 NM. There are corporate conversions available on the market for 727 which fit several PATS tanks in the cargo hold and can increase the range out to 4500 NM.

But if I were to guess I’d say the most likely scenario would be to stage from the closest point possible to maximize your fuel on board, assuming a 9/11-style attack.

You could easily fly this jet from Africa to the northern areas in South America or even somewhere in the Caribbean chain. From either one of these points you could make the southern USA with 40 to 50 percent of your fuel load still onboard.

The parts of the Caribbean and South America suffers from the same lack of radar service coverage as the African continent and therefore makes an ideal place to operate from without causing panic. But once you approached the US ADIZ you would be required to have on file and then activate an IFR or DVFR flight plan depending on altitude and weather conditions. Without this you would not be allowed to penetrate the ADIZ anyway even before 9/11 and risk military intercept.

We are still very venerable to another 9/11-style attack from a very smart, determined, well-funded and thorough terrorist. The only hope would be the eagle eyes and ears of an alert controller either seeing, hearing or feeling that something is just not quite right and picking up the phone, calling for help, which he/she would get in 3 to 5 minutes in the form of your friendly neighborhood Air Guard F-16 driver.

But if this jet was to be packed with explosives and the fuel used to simply deliver the flying bomb to it’s intended target then from the points of departure I have listed you could fly literally anywhere in the USA or Canada.

Personally I am 99.999% positive the FAA has informed all ATC Centers about this jet and if anything just popped up out of the blue so-to-speak our Air Force would know about it within minutes and would be more than happy to pay it a visit.

While I don’t have very much faith in “Homeland Security” I do have volumes of faith in the men and women who man the “Bat caves” (ATC centers), they were stung once on 9/11 and felt helpless as the very system they work with and love was turned against them and I have the highest amount of faith in the men and women who fly CAP and Guard Patrols, they too were helpless on that very day as their country was attacked and they were not prepared to defend her.

After reading that article in Time Mag about that F-15 driver who took off on 9/11 unarmed, with nothing but a plane and fuel to defend his country. He told the interviewer that if it came down to it he would have sacrificed his life to bring down any potential jet that was on a collision course with another target.

I assure you they won’t let it happen again.

As far as spoofing a real flight until it is too late, that is my greatest fear…

An arriving B727 from some place in South America, on an approved IFR flight plan, listed under a current call sign, maybe even a regular cargo operator or contract cargo operation flying into Miami or Atlanta International around 8 AM on a Monday or a Friday morning.

Aircraft is doing everything fine, following ATC instructions to a TEE, cleared for the approach, checks in with tower then cleared to land… plane looks good to the tower controller, is established on approach gear and flaps down, then just about 30 seconds before touchdown the aircraft appears to be going missed approach, the pilot checks in with tower…

ATL tower Jihad 123 on the missed were not configured to land…

ATL would not bat an eye at this call all it means is that the pilot did not like something, maybe he was too fast, Co-pilot was slow with a checklist or he honestly forgot something and wanted to come around again just to be safe.

As the jet powers up, it instead of climbing out on runway heading begins to veer towards the main terminal and car park, 30 seconds later it slams into the terminal and explodes because it was carrying a cargo hold full of explosives and kills half the people in the terminal and on a busy day God only knows how many that would be.

And in all honesty it would look like an accident in the beginning.

That is my worst fear.

I’m not too worried about someone hijacking another jet, the passengers are just to ready to fight for their lives for that to happen again.