The air industry's worst nightmare

[bigD]

No no no...you guys have it all wrong. Bruce Willis was fighting some bad guy on the wing while the 747 was taxiing. During the fight the bad guy was thrown off the front of the wing, and sucked into one of the engines (which apparently didn't do any real damage as the takeoff was continued later). So ANOTHER bad guy comes out onto the wing, and gives Bruce a better fight. This time Bruce falls off the front of the wing, but he manages to grab hold of an engine pylon. As he's hanging onto the pylon, he notices a valve/handle that's labeled, "Emergency Fuel Dump" or something like that. So he lets go of the pylon, and as he flies backwards under the wing, he grabs the handle, and large amounts of fuel begin to gush out.

As he's watching the plane taxi away and eventually begin to take off, he says, "Yippee kai ayeeee motherf*cker..." and lights the fuel - and the rest is history.

What's so unbelievable about that!? I thought it was an exceptional Hollywood moment!

 

[JCJ]

oh yeah i remember now

of course i'm a non-smoker - so if i am ever in a similar situation i guess i'll be unprepared to save the day as i won't have a cigarette lighter handy (sigh)

 

[sanford&son]

here now!

at three a.m., about nine months ago, i was awakened by the swat team in my yard executing a drug bust against middle eastern origin resident aliens. aside from the two kilos of smack found on scene, there were numerous un-registered fully automatic weapons and at least one stinger missle. without giving out my address, this happened in florida, and received virtually no national press. the home and a near-by import business were siezed and are currently slated to be sold at auction.

our borders are not safe.

anybody can bring anything they want in here if they are creative.

while i agree that talkind about it won't help any of us when the time comes, it is going to happen. like they all say, it's just a question of when.

-L

 

[KC-10 Driver]

It has happened, albeit not in the U.S.

Today, an Israeli airliner had a missile fired at it shortly after takeoff from Mombasa, Kenya. The missile missed, and the aircraft continued safely to Tel Aviv.

They were very lucky.

 

[V-1]

Seems like everytime I hear a report about these portable anti-aircraft missiles being fired, the outcome is the missile missed it's target.

Doesn't seem these things are terribly accurate, although I suppose there are a few lucky shots made. No one even noticed when one of these were fired at one of our military aircraft in Saudi Arabia a few months back...until a routine patrol found the empty launcher discarded outside the base.

Junk equipment, operated by poor marksmen, against a target it would have questionable effectiveness against. I doubt an airliner is as vulnerable when damaged as a helicopter is. An airplane's wing doesn't rotate. My unenlightened opinion only.

 

[banned username 2]

Hey ShawnC....


Such a far-fetched theory now???

Isreali Jetliner hit by missle during Take-Off

 

[ceo_of_the_sofa]

Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "If it was indeed missiles shot against civilian aviation this is a very dangerous escalation of terror.....Today they fired missiles at Israeli planes, tomorrow they'll fire missiles at U.S. planes, British planes, planes from every state."

 

[avbug]

Going back to the original title of the thread...our worst nightmare...Pamela Anderson marries Bill Clinton, and the offspring becomes FAA Administrator.

Second worse nightmare...Pamela Anderson becomes FAA administrator.

Of course, when everybody wakes up and realizes that missle attacks have already occured here...successfully...then we'll be getting somewhere.

TWA 800 may have been covered up in the interest of protecting the public fears, but it doesn't change the facts.

I'm aware that will wrinkle a lot of noses from those with their heads buried in the sand, but again, it doesn't change the facts. It doesn't change the fact that missles were known to enter this country, and that it hasn't all been covered.

We've been through it before on this site...lots of experts on the subject, all denying the same facts. It happened. Just prior to it happening, a launch occured in the same spot. Shortly before that, a French Mistral was located in New Jersey (If I recall correctly).

Lets hear the flames begin...but again, it won't change the facts. Your worst fears have been here for a long time now. There is nothing new under the sun.

 

[JCJ]

wonder if it was an honest-to-goodnes shoulder-fired sam or something lesser like an unguided rpg or something similar?

 

[EagleRJ]

It would be extraordinarily difficult to hit an aircraft with an unguided rocket like an RPG-7 or LAAW, even if you were standing on the departure end of the runway. They are meant to engage lightly armored or unarmored targets from less than 500 yards away horizontally. The rocket motor only burns for a split second, so the rocket is at full velocity when it leaves the tube and won't subject the operator to backblast. If you fired one vertically, you would set your legs on fire, and the rocket would probably only coast up to a thousand feet or so before turning around and falling back toward you!

All of the missile engagements against airliners over the past few years here and abroad are consistant with MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defence Systems)

 

[SpiderMan]

First question. What is the engagement envelope for an effective MANPAD, mainly the Stinger or the Soviets counterpart? Secondly, wasnt TWA 800 operating normally according to the recovered FDRs above 13000 before it blew up? It seems pretty far fetched that a MANPAD brought down TWA 800 at that altitude, maybe some military guys would know for sure, but as far as a cover-up goes, i find it a little hard to believe that this is what happened.

 

[avbug]

Stinger, no. Mistral or Vangaurd (chinese), yes.

Most of these weapons are intended to take out a single heat source; remove the engine from the airplane or helicopter, or disable it. They are not intended to destroy the target. This isn't true of all the weapons that may be potentially used, however.

It's also equally true that a small source can trigger a larger source, and a small weapon on a forward aspect shot may pick up an alternate heat source, such as a bleed vent from a heat exchanger, adjacent to a fuel cell (or other sensitive point).

Regardless of the size of the primary explosion, it's a given that any explosion on or about your airplane is not a good thing.

Prior to the last time around, solid intelligence provided that weapons were entering the country, from Iraq. The intelligence community was aware of the threat. However, it wasn't the same threat that was used, and its' unclear weather or not the existing threat was properly addressed or recognized...until the event itself.

Most MANPADS are not sufficient to take down an airplane based soley on the primary explosion, unless the user becomes exceptionaly lucky.

 

[JimNtexas]

Fox News had pictures of the launcher that was found. It looked like an SA-7 to me (but I haven't studied war for almost 10 years, so I may be mistaken).

The weird thing was that the tube and handgrip were painted blue, which usually means a training round.

Edited to add:

Here is a picture of one of the two launchers that were found in Kenya:

I'll bet a dollar that the Israeli airliner had some kind of IR countermeasures.

 

[Timebuilder]

Much of the effectiveness has to do with where the target is relative to your position, and its direction of travel, along with its signature. Properly targeted and fired, these are surprisingly effective weapons.

These missiles should not be under-estimated.

 

[EagleRJ]

First question. What is the engagement envelope for an effective MANPAD, mainly the Stinger or the Soviets counterpart? Secondly, wasnt TWA 800 operating normally according to the recovered FDRs above 13000 before it blew up? It seems pretty far fetched that a MANPAD brought down TWA 800 at that altitude, maybe some military guys would know for sure, but as far as a cover-up goes, i find it a little hard to believe that this is what happened.

I think the military advertises a maximum engagement altitude of around 10,000', but keep in mind that's for a small, fast target like a fighter that may be making evasive maneouvers or deploying countermeasures. The missile will be going more than Mach 2 when the motor burns out, so it will still have the energy to maneouver and coast much higher than 10,000'.

The pilot of the Israeli airliner said he saw two smoke trails go up past the aircraft, but he also said he felt a bump and felt a bang or rattle like something hit the airplane. It's not clear if both missiles were a clean miss, or if one exploded well under the plane and shrapnel hit the belly. One of the news channels showed a camera shot panning down the length of the belly, and there wasn't any obvious damage or punctures.

Let's keep our eyes open and be careful up there, boys and girls!

 

[dtoften]

My understanding of these SA units are that the life expectancy of the seeker in 10 years max. So, the old SA-7 and Afghan's X-mas gift Stingers need seekers with new liquid nitrogen. Since US isn't giving out stingers anymore, fanatics need new seekers from Russian (or China) and they will probably buy new SA-18 instead of new seekers. My question is how much damage could they do to a Boeing aircraft? Engine is somewhat isolated compared to fighters. I imagine US has done a study somewhere and they are not talking, yet?

 

[Flightjock30]

One certainly brought down TWA flight 800! Except that was a Navy missile.

 

[dispatchguy]

If ya wanna update yourself on the most latest open source intel, on OPFOR missiles, check out the Federation of American Scientists

http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/index.html

 

[Passingbye]

Airport security

I'm not a regular member and I probably won't be back but here's my 2 cents concerning the issue: when I heard about the attack against El-Al, I almost fell out of my chair. Here's the reason why. During the summer of 2000, I was at LAX with a friend. Driving around the airport, I noticed how areas were so "open". For example there is a street, I won't name it and besides it's blocked now after the 9-11 incident, that took you right to the hub where AA and Hawaiin parked their planes. I mean there was only a sidewalk and a five foot chain link fence separating planes with opened doors and step ladders, whatever they're called from the streets. We could get so close to the planes that I could tell you the color of the interior. There were no security guards, no one. My friend and I were like, what the hell is this? Why isn't this area secure? This prompted an evening long conversation about airport/airline security security. After eating dinner at Encounter, we drove towards the beach Dockweiler (sp) and took a street call ********* (this stret is now blocked off as well). What made this mentionable is that ********* is a quick shortcut taking you from the airport directly to the shoreline. Upon ascending ********'s steep slope, we had a clear view of the west face of the runway. Just park your car and you can see every plane taking off or landing. Again, there was no security, no city police, not even another car drove by for at least 10 minutes. We sat there and talked about how if we were terrorist it would be so easy to take a surface to air missile and target a plane while taking off. At Lax, the crafts are still quite low above the shoreline while taking off. It is now sacry to think that a conversation a had with a friend 2 years ago can now be a reality. I have some good news. Recently, I've been to Lax and I see more police cruisers and many streets have been blocked off but it was such a shock to see how "loose" security was back then. Man, just to think of it. I probably won't return to this board because I don't wish to be subjected to personal attacks. I'm just a passerbye sharing a story with the airline communtiy. That's all. Nothing more and nothing less. For years I have wanted to be in the industry and was even offered employment in early 2001 with SWA but at this time I don't think I am ready. I hope one day the tide will turn and maybe I can pursue my dream but until then I wish all your days may be safe. Best wishes.

 

[ceo_of_the_sofa]

In regards to a comment on the Israeli aircraft having some sort of protective measures.
I remember reading somewhere, within the last couple of days, that while the Israeli military will not comment on it, "certain" measures were in use...Whether it was flares or disco-balls, I dont know...but why is the US so slow to catch up? Seems like Part 121ers are a fair catch to these guys...