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Seattle airliner stolen and crashed


F-15E WSO

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Developing, but 

sounds like someone ( mechanic?) stole a plane from Sea Tac airport. Took off. Got intercepted. Did a barrell roll. Crashed. 

Horizon Q-400  

These attachments show Sheriff  airplane circling crash  

 

 

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90A0C448-B625-4359-81B9-39287035EC82.png

Edited by F-15E WSO
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So what exactly is the point of having billions of dollars worth of fighters, fuel and weapons on alert around the country when an airliner gets hijacked next to a city of 4 million people, the mentally disturbed pilot is doing aerobatics over the water, and you just have the 15's hang back and log a 1.0 dissimilar formation sortie? Someone at NORTHCOM should be getting fired over this.

Edited by pintail21
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No glorification for this POS from me. He was a fvcking criminal. Period. Thankfully there was no further loss of human life during his commission of a host of felonies.

He could have driven the plane into the Space Needle.

I don’t give a shit if he or the Germanwings piece of human excrement needed more coddling.

That criminal made it harder for the rest of the professionals left in the wake of a major security breach.

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49 minutes ago, ImNotARobot said:

That criminal made it harder for the rest of the professionals left in the wake of a major security breach.

I cannot even imagine what sort of "security protocols" are going to be discussed... and some implemented... as a result of this. 

Stand by for knee-jerking...

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2 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:

I cannot even imagine what sort of "security protocols" are going to be discussed... and some implemented... as a result of this. 

Stand by for knee-jerking...

It's another nail in the coffin for single pilot or single remote pilot ops, that's for sure.

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3 hours ago, pintail21 said:

So what exactly is the point of having billions of dollars worth of fighters, fuel and weapons on alert around the country when an airliner gets hijacked next to a city of 4 million people, the mentally disturbed pilot is doing aerobatics over the water, and you just have the 15's hang back and log a 1.0 dissimilar formation sortie? Someone at NORTHCOM should be getting fired over this.

You're suggesting that a shootdown situation would have ended better than the actual event did?

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25 minutes ago, Kenny Powers said:

You're suggesting that a shootdown situation would have ended better than the actual event did?

It would send the message that we don't fuck around when it comes to this kind of shit.  Had this happened on 9/12/2001, he would have had about as much time to joyride as it took the 15's to get there.

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My point is, this is about the best possible outcome, unless the guy could have successfully landed somewhere without hurting anyone. A shootdown would have really opened a can of worms.

All participants in a situation like this are using the most up to date information to make a risk assessment. Rarely would that result in an engagement order. Again, this situation turned out almost as good as you could hope.

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35 minutes ago, Kenny Powers said:

A shootdown would have really opened a can of worms.

Yes, it certainly would have.

However, sitting back and stating that the situation turned out about as well it could is nothing more than Monday morning quarterbacking.  We got lucky.  

We had a guy steal an aircraft, and fly around a major metropolitan area stating the end result would have him dead.  Suicide... along with how many others?  I'm not sure it gets more "mental health crazy" than that.  And no one knew how this would turn out until he was a smoking hole at 2047L.  Was anyone confident at 2015L that he wasn't going to bury this airliner into the city? 

I don't know who gives the order to shoot down, or if the ROE allows the pilots to make that call.  And I'm not arguing it's a painful call to make.  But have we not determined the triggers that will result in an engagement/shootdown 17 years after 9/11?  Has this not been rehearsed time and time again?  If this DID meet the triggers, then I'd like to know why a shootdown was not executed.  And if this hijacking DIDN'T meet the criteria, then I'd like to hear that along with an explanation as to why.  Instead, we seemed paralyzed by our fear of Jim Acosta and the news media asking questions post-shootdown.  

Had this guy ended his life by plowing into Seattle's Columbia Center with a pair armed Eagles watching with their hands tied, this would be a very different day in America.  Again.  

One more thing to ponder:  had this guy had an Arabic accent, and had he been transmitting "Allah akbar!" on the radio, would that have changed the outcome?  Or would that simply bring more allegations of racial profiling in America by MSNBC? 

There is a lot that is going to have to be discussed and acted on within the Air Defense leadership corps and the gov't officials that make these decisions.  

Edited by HuggyU2
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9 minutes ago, HuggyU2 said:

Yes, it certainly would have.

However, sitting back and stating that the situation turned out about as well it could is nothing more than Monday morning quarterbacking.  We got lucky.  

I disagree. We didn't get lucky, our process worked. We knew the situation, the Eagle pilots and ATC fed up to date information to everyone involved, and the decision was made to NOT shoot this aircraft down based on the threat it posed. Had the threat assessment changed, then the decision to shoot it down would have changed.

Edited by Kenny Powers
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