Military jets escort Sunwing plane back to Toronto Airport

[Edwhatever]

'They were drinking alcohol and fighting': Military jets escort Sunwing plane back to Toronto Airport after two disruptive women passengers put flight 'under threat'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2736363/Flight-returns-2-airline-passengers-custody.html

[Drguano]

Wonder if we can get them to join us in November

[canucks6024]

Haha. I always wondered...

[CaptainQuintero]

What I never understand in these circumstances is why jets are scrambled. What are they going to do to make the passengers calm down, blow the plane out of the sky?

[DoubleDD]

What I never understand in these circumstances is why jets are scrambled. What are they going to do to make the passengers calm down, blow the plane out of the sky?

It's just SOP after 9-11.

[ogus]

Mrs. Mayor?

[Maplepie]

It's just SOP after 9-11.

Not after 911, it was standard practice for NORAD during the cold war.

That just carried over.

Sent by the Enigma on BlackBerry.

[kiwiman911]

it's a procedure between the atc and the pilot, the pilots have a way of sending a message to atc via the transponder code they flash when they are flying(a transponder code is displayed next to the ''dot'' that is displayed on the radar screen of the atc) if the pilots sends a certain code then the atc has no choice but call the army

[Maplepie]

if the pilots sends a certain code then the atc has no choice but call the army

ah yes. it's that thing in 24 where after 9/11, the pilot can signal that the plane will be used as suicide weapon so the fighter escorts will shoot it down.

remember 24? remember that show?

good times.

[canadianbeaver]

Video for sale?

[Pilsner14]

Classic Canadian girls.

[puromaniac]

I'd be pretty pissed to be delayed from getting into Cuba and my arrival smoke. Given all the hype around airlines travel, you have to wonder about these people.

[Edwhatever]

I have flown Cubana Air, and Air Canada before.

Who knows next time I might fly Sunwing

[helix]

**** Show...............

[RijkdeGooier]

Did nobody have the balls to put them in tie-wraps until touch down? The pilot does have the authority to do so.

[CanuckSARTech]

The main issue with this one was that apparently one was a Ukrainian gal, and the other a Russian, and while both were apparently friends and were going to the same nursing school together, it was a comment that one levelled at the other, relating to world events to those nations, and coupled in with a threat against the plane itself. Thus the flight crew had no option.

And, as silly as these issues may sound, the flight crews really have no options. Yes, it was something in place during the cold war, but not in this nature. Those rules were for actual hijackings or very direct military threats, and only within individual nations' airspace. This new nightmare of issues is solely because of post-9-11 events and regulations, and that these flights have to "return to base" so to speak. Seems really ridiculous, and trust me, it will likely be changed.

This flight for example was basically over in between the U.S. eastern seaboard and Bermuda. The threats were levelled. So, the plane, rather than land at Atlanta or Orlando (or even continue to Havana or instead land at the nearest smaller / non-major airport) was forced to turn around, travel over critical parts of the U.S. east coast major population hubs (after the security threat was made, remember), and was then met by military jets and escorted back to Toronto airport.

Lots of kinks to work out with this system. One of which would be to revamp the laws that make wilful self- and over-indulgence in alcohol a non-excuse in legal forms (such as it ridiculously is in murder charges, for example), and then make the person(s) making the threats to be solely responsible and claimable against any costs to be recouped for responding to the threats (a CF-18 Hornet fighter jet for example costs about just under $50k an hour to fly, factoring in all costs).

Good luck then ladies.

[.....note - please let me get through our November flights un-Keithed^TM...lol.]