alt Hacker News1. Are super-organized, highly-capable, fully-sane terrorists the only threat? Or does the threat model include mentally-ill / personality disorder people, who might make mistakes, or taunt those whose job it is to stop them? Or include people of either kind, who create diversions? Or include people who make a statement in an unexpected way?
2. Did the captain, flight control, and everyone else who needed to decide, have definitive information that the report was only an innocuous Bluetooth advertisement for an innocuous consumer device, and somehow knew that no other threat was going on? If not, then I'd commend whomever decided to follow protocol, and err on the side of inconveniencing a lot of people, rather than risk tragedies that the protocol was designed to prevent.
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The thing that surprises me is they flew back to Newark for almost 90 minutes. It doesn't make sense to me.
(1) Either you believe the threat is credible and you put it down at the nearest suitable airport in the least amount of time. Say Sydney at about 200km to your west, or FSP at 150km in the direction you're going (not a great fit, but doable). In both cases you could probably land within 20 minutes, a bit more if you aim for Gander (Fun history for that airport, great as an emergency diversion).
(2) or, you believe the threat is not credible. At this point you might as well continue the flight. Flying 90 minutes back does not seem (to me) to meaningfully reduce the risk if someone is actually planning to trigger a bomb anyway.
> I'd commend whomever decided to follow protocol
Protocol would be quietly diverting to the closest airport. They didn’t do that. They chugged back to Newark. After making a visible scene on the PA. This was a hissy fit.
Literally no pilot ever has been able to know that no other threat was going on.
> Are super-organized, highly-capable, fully-sane terrorists the only threat? Or does the threat model include mentally-ill / personality disorder people, who might make mistakes, or taunt those whose job it is to stop them?
I want to think the answer is both. But I cannot think of an example where #2 has actually happened in history resulting in injury or death.
A minor grammar nit. Its commend whoever decided to follow protocol, not whomever. You choose the case of who(m)ever based on its function in the dependent clause not the clause’s function in the sentence.
Landing the plane because of something that could be interpreted as a bomb threat without waiting to be sure it was intended that way seems like a precaution on the far end of reasonable, but still reasonable.
Demanding that people disable Bluetooth does not seem reasonable. If there's an actual bomber, tipping them off that you're reacting to their threat might lead them to set off the bomb early. Similarly, demanding that someone shut off the "Free Palestine, F Zionists" WiFi network or the flight crew will call the FBI is counterproductive; if that's cause to call the FBI, just call them. A warning lets the person cover their tracks.
For the record, "BOMB" is probably cause to call the FBI and "Free Palestine, F Zionists" by itself almost certainly isn't, but is something to mention when calling them about "BOMB".