aden23 wrote:Can someone explain why they didn’t shoot this plane down immediately?
It’s a confirmed hijacked plane, flown erratically by a suicidal man over innocent people. What exactly were they waiting for?
I haven't heard much of any mention of the F-15C's guided to intercept this guy from NORAD, but they were there in almost no time - and told to start a covert trail 2-3 miles behind him while most of the ATC you've heard was happening.
The "pilot" that was talking to him is one of the F-15 pilots actually.
Also - after they confirmed the crash, they were told to go "weapons secured" - so presumably on departure they were already cleared weapons hot based on their training / ROI for an intercept target.
One was busy communicating with NORAD, ATC, relays, and Rich, sounds like the other guy was just waiting to pull the trigger.
The entire time they relayed altitude, heading, etc, while listening to ATC trying to keep him away from populated land and busy airspace.
There was NO reason to blow this guy out of the sky.
GalaxyFlyer wrote:As if a plane, once shot down, won’t crash into the very populace you presume to be protecting. Orders to fire are clearly defined and accountable. I do tend agree that, by shooting him down, it might be a disincentive for copycats, knowing doing so is a death sentence. But, do we need this disincentive?
GF
Nah, I think the speed at which those F-15s were on his tail and cleared for engagement is basically a nearly-equal deterrent. Of course the media isn't focusing on ANY positive side of this at all. They SLAM past incidents when high publicity targets weren't intercepted immediately, then totally ignore it when these guys had a lock in something like 13 minutes from the time ATC picked up the phone. (Which is SPECTACULAR and I'm really proud of those guys too!)
QuarkFly wrote:Hmmm, hope you cant "steal" a 777 or A380 just as easily as a Q400 !!
Hopefully just a bad show by the folks at AS and SeaTac...not an aviation-wide problem.
And what is it with pilot suicides?...Egyptair 767 over the Atlantic -- the Germanwings A320 in the Alps...just frickin jump off a bridge. Why take a plane, and worse, passengers with you !!
Pretty ignorant post.
There are thousands of ops and procedures carried out at hundreds of airports around the country, via tens of thousands of employees that we trust our lives to on a daily basis. Most have the ability to do something like this, or worse - with pax involved. It's just not something worth thinking about, it is what it is. Pay sucks but most of the people I know feel their jobs are rewarding at the end of the day. Lord knows there's plenty of other (easier / less stressful) jobs out there that pay the same or better.
AS and SeaTac did nothing wrong - they made numerous calls to the aircraft prior to TO. Also it wasn't located at a gate, it was at a maint ramp where I'd imagine ground controllers don't take much notice to movements and there's no gate or ground staff watching where the thing was going - indeed someone said the aircraft was done for the day anyways.
GalaxyFlyer wrote:freakyrat wrote:usxguy wrote:If its even remotely possible to say something positive about this, I bet BBD is anxious to get their hands on the data recorders so they can see exactly how much force the plane can handle - he did a lot of maneuvers you don't put those planes in.
I think some of the BBD test pilots have already done some of these with the Q400 during flight testing.
I rather doubt BBD flight test has done aerobatics in the Q and I know some of those guys—pros.
GF
Without being morbid, this popped into my head pretty quick.
Ironically, a friend of mine flies unlimited aerobatics (MX-S) AND flies the Q400 for a defense contractor (R&D / 'who knows' stuff inside) - interesting combo of experience in this situation. He saw the video and was a little surprised the wings didn't snap off on the bottom of that "loop".
I assume the Q400's FDR is advanced enough to record +/- G loading?
Also why do people keep saying he was a mechanic? I thought he was confirmed to be a customer service agent or whatever their official title is at Horizon?
Personally I think it's all really sad. I'm not going to squash the guy for "potentially risking hundreds of lives" or say that "we need to turn the entire staff-access / security protocol system upside down to prevent this" either. This whole thing is just a mess, but I see it as the golden BB that'll impact the industry every now and then. As long as it's run by humans, you can't cut this stuff out 100%. Even if you limit and/or monitor ramper / mech / staff access, the pilots can still do it. The only difference is that there tends to be a couple hundred people behind them when they do. I don't see unmanned commercial aviation in my future (or lifetime) so let's just focus on the human / mental factors at play here and try to help some of these people. He sounded like a good dude.
