Flights From Paris to U.S. Cancelled

MSNBC | December 24, 2003

[cyncooper]

MSNBC just announced that three flights from Paris to the U.S. have been suddenly cancelled due to "security concerns". The first flight was scheduled to depart Paris heading for Los Angeles.

I could not find an article yet.

[witnesstothefall]

called the land of Lafayette "the enemy".

For the record, France has some nice farmland and the sections of Med coastline that weren't despoiled by oil are known to be very nice.

But Lafayette fled France literally for his life, as any American francophile or francophobe, as the case may be, should know. The French, hmmpf!

[EyesWideOpen]

Will be praying for you. Have a good trip.

Thank you so much. I have been following all the UK terror threads closely for the past 30 days and still plan to go. With all that has been going on over there, sure, I am concerned. Attacks have already been thwarted. Good bet that there will be more. But I will be aware of my surroundings at all times, I do not plan to be in downtown London on New Years (just as easy to drink warm beer elsewhere), and most of all I won't let them win.

God bless all you here in the States over the holidays! Y'all be safe too.

[RandallFlagg]

AWWW! Same to you, Marine!

Hugs to your family!

[blam]

"Everything appears to be normal in Atlanta; they aren't reporting any outbound delays presently."

Thanks, Mike. Merry Christmas.

[Steel Wolf]

But L.A. doesn't have any high-profile, symbolic targets. Of course, they might just want to kill the people on the plane.

L.A. IS a high profile target. The actual target building is not terribly important in this case, so long as it kills a lot of people. Los Angeles is on the West Coast, a liberal area so far free of any major terrorist activity. It is also a very well known city, like New York, that everyone in the world will have heard of. The PR value would be enormous.

There are plenty of commercial targets downtown, hotels near Disneyland, and large massess of people to hit. AQ needs to hit California if they intend to draw us deeper into this conflict, and they know it.

[japaneseghost]

You can't even get up to take a pee 30 minutes to/from Reagan National. Air Marshals on all flights.

I don't think there are any int'l flights at National, because the runways aren't long enough.

Flight attendants and crews all know each other. A strange pilot would be red flag time.

[RandallFlagg]

Sorry, I meant Guardsman.

My bad..

[Not A Snowbird]

There's no need for intel to realize that planes departing from foreign countries pose a tremendous security risk,

I agree!

[hadrian]

I had to skim through the posts so dodn't know if anybody made this point - wouldn't a transatlantic flight from Europe to LA have a similar amount of fuel as it entered US airspace as a transcontinental flight from NY to LA, which is what the 9/11 flights were like? (adjsuting, of course, for the flight path which wouldn't bring it over NY but may bring it in closer to Chicago).

While I am no fan of recent French politics, when I visited Normandy in April 1998 with my then-12 and 10 year old daughters, it was moving for me and for them to visit a small British cemetary about 5 miles south of Bayeux - in a corner of a farmer's field, with about 60 British graves and one free Czech soldier, all died about June 10 1944 - the grounds were immaculate and each grave had a recently-placed bouquet of paper flowers, obviously made by school kids, with "Merci" written on them - someone was teaching those kids something right. That wasn't in June on a D-day anniversary, so don't know what the occasion was. Also, the friendliness of the people towards my family and the signs in shops - not just tourist shops - written in part in English with American and British flags, "We Welcome our Liberators."

[don-o]

Yeah "we". "We" don't like the behaviour of France. Do you?

I have lived long enough to not stereotype people and nations and religions.

And there is no "we" on Free Republic.

Sure, it's good clean fun to bash. This medium works well for that. But, when the chips are down, comes a time to lay off that.

[Grampa Dave]

Have a good and safe trip.

Enjoy a Plowman's Lunch with a couple of on taps at a good pub for me!

[fatima]

I don't know,I found out yesterday her plane was coming into Maryland and was to land at 11 AM this morning.She was in Iraq but I don't know where the troops fly out of.

[Revolting cat!]

Do you think we could make this cancellation permanent?

[gipper81]

Oh brother.

[Semper911]

Thanks but not a Marine. The Semper is for Semper Paratus!

I'm a Boats, too, remember? (I guess we had that conversation a long time ago.)

[Steve_Seattle]

"A strange pilot would be red flag time."

A mole would by definition not be a strange pilot, but someone who was assumed to be legit, someone who had gone through the normal training. Al Quaeda bides its time, and will prepare for years to pull off something big. As for not being allowed to take a pee within 30 minutes of DC, I don't expect terrorists to follow the rules on that or anything else. :-)

[mhking]

I don't see anything about it on AF's website. I'm sure it's on another airline.

[dighton]

Spooky all right.

The Viking Kittens are using their Navy SEAL "silent ZOT! technique" again.

Well, maybe. According to other sources, these were elite Mossad-trained Viking Kittens.

;-)

[RightWhale]

But, when the chips are down, comes a time to lay off that.

And so it shall be! Merry Christmas!