[Blood of Tyrants]

It could, but South America is much better monitored than Africa so the possibility of detection is much higher. Also, there are many military search radars up and down both coasts that would detect the anomolie of a plane flying without it's transponder on many hundreds of miles before it was a problem. (I hope.)

So, the sneak attack would probably come in the form of a flight that looked legitimate and it would divert only at the last possible second.

All that being said, I think that this is just a case of old fashioned larceny.

[dead]

If it is in terrorist hands, they'd never even try to get it into the US. It would be shot down over the ocean.

Smacking it into a southern European city would much easier. Athens, Rome, Madrid, for example.