On Feb 2, 6:52*pm, frank wrote:
OK guys, take a deep breath.

Couple of points. Its a GAO study. Some of them are good, some of them
are well, studies. GAO does not have subject matter experts. Think of
grad students that go out and write a paper on something. Like I said,
some good, some bad. Some really atrocious.

One point to consider. It costs a lot of bucks to keep planes ready on
the tarmac. Backups, maintenance, crews. And its boring. Some places
like Alaska, yeah you get some launches. Most places you end up
playing games.

And remember, 9/11 was launched INTERNALLY.

Anybody here want to shoot down an American airliner? Over the US?
Thought not.

And yeah, there are still NORAD or ADC sectors that take care of air
traffic. Lots of them. I think it was Vanity Fair that broke the story
on this when the tapes from the sector that dealt with NY and DC were
declassified.

Read through the transcripts, its like anything else, real time,
nobody knows what's going on. Like we always used to joke, best Intel
was from CNN. That's not too far from the truth.

Bluntly, we don't need a lot of effort spent on this. It'll probably
never happen again, and there are better ways to prevent it. OK,
besides letting groups of Arab looking guys get on the same flight
with box cutters. IF you look at what happened on 9/11 and where the
system failed, I'm not going to say the US is doing much better on all
this. At least El Al has professionals doing their flight screening.
But we can't afford to do that. Or we will until the first quarter
bill comes in.


Agreed.

Bluntly, we don't need a lot of effort spent on this. It'll probably
never happen again, and there are better ways to prevent it. OK,
besides letting groups of Arab looking guys get on the same flight
with box cutters.

In a purely speculative sense, one would think that some common sense
measures that were mandated to be in place years ago - especially
secured cockpit doors and bulkheads proof against small arms - would
pretty much render the question hypothetical. While hijacker(s) of any
motive might get loose in the cabin with a box cutter or even a small
arm of some variety, if they can't get into the cockpit, they can't
control the aircraft.

A hijacker is essentially reduced to two gruesome options: threaten to
start carving up passengers if his demands aren't met - which, while a
psychological burden on the cockpit crew, it isn't likely a demand to
be met post 9/11, or threaten to detonate a bomb which will destroy
the plane - which is a possibility, but lack of control denies them
the aircraft itself as a weapon of any accuracy.

Not much point in shooting down an airliner that can't be hijacked
from its intended course, regardless of whatever tragedies might
occurring in the cabin.