On Sunday, January 25, 2015 at 1:48:54 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 01:15:57 -0500, micky
wrote:

On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 00:36:20 -0500, wrote:

On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 00:17:43 -0500, micky
wrote:

When there is a bomb threat on a plane that is in the air, and the air
force scrambles fighter planes to accompany the plane, what is the point
of that?

Is someone going to reach his hands out of the fighter and disable the
bomb?

They might shoot the plane down if it headed for a big population
center.

That applies if it's hijacked, but if there is a bomb threat, like there
was today on two planes, it wouldn't be a good idea to shoot it down
until one knew for sure there was a bomb ( and one that couldn't be
found, removed, and thrown out the door).

Generally, to know for sure there is a bomb, they have to wait until the
bomb explodes, and then it's either too late to shoot it down, or if the
plane is still flying, either things won't get any worse or there's a
second bomb** and we're back to the original situation

So why the fighter planes, like they did today?

They are supposed to divert it to a remote airport somewhere.


The answer was right below your question.
They are not going to direct a plane that may have a bomb on it to a
major airport.

His point is that it wasn't someone on the plane that said they have
a bomb, etc. It was the typical phoned in BS fake bomb scare that
AFAIK, has never turned out to be true. It seems virtually impossible
that terrorists intent on hijacking a plane are going to call in a
bomb scare to screw their own plan.

I think the answer to his question is that post 911 the US treats
most of these things the same way. They've even sent the fighter
jets up to escort planes with an unruly passenger. I guess in the case
of a bomb, if it turned out to be real and went off, damaging the plane,
but leaving it flyable, having a plane nearby could be of some benefit.
The escort pilot would see what happened. And if it left the plane
flyable, but damaged, the escort might be able to give the plane
pilot some useful info as to the visible damage, etc. I think the
bottom line is military pilots need some training hours anyway and
no one wants to be the one that someone can later say, you should have,
but you didn't....