AircraftNews.Com

It is perhaps time to consider this topic. One of the problems with having weapons is that the time comes when there is an opportunity to use them and there is also a time when they should be used. The two may not be the same occasion. We have seen repeated episodes of tragedy arising out of this quandary. the British police in their shocking and tragic pursuit of an illegal immigrant whom they had erroneously concluded to be a terrorist was the victim in part of a genuine concern about a threat but in part a recently introduced doctrine. This was the doctrine of “rapid neutralization” or “CNS shut down” to use two of the euphemisms for filling someone’s head with as many bullets as one can so as to ensure their dying twitch does not allow them to set of a bomb. It is disturbingly likely that this horrible technique was so fascinating that whether they knew it or not the Police were waiting for a chance to demonstrate that they could do it.
There are regrettably lunatics who somehow think it is right to kill people they don’t know, who have never and never would, do harm to them and theirs in the name of one cause or another and authorities have a duty to protect the populace against them. It is an aweful responsibility that has to be faced.

The aviation community has its own version of this dilemma but so far has avoided the tragedy that is waiting, of a well meant and indeed commanded shoot down of an innocuous aircraft deemed to be a terrorist threat.
As time goes by without much public debate it seems possible that the time will come. It is now known that Cheney the VP approved the Military to shoot down civilian aircraft under certain circumstance in the wake of 911. There has been a sort of denial arising probably out of the unreality of the situation but the latest incident in the US where a Mooney pilot became unresponsive and eventually crashed raises this important question again. let us have a bit of a think about this
How close did jets come to shooting down an out-of-control plane?

– The F-16 military jets that were tailing a single-engine plane Wednesday before it crashed in a Randolph County corn field were prepared, if necessary, to shoot the aircraft out of the East Central Indiana sky.
“It’s a tough call,” Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command, told the Associated Press on Thursday. “The pilots that are up there, that’s not something they
want to do, but if they’re called upon to do it, they’ll do it.”
The military jets were scrambled to intercept the plane after its pilot apparently lost consciousness late Wednesday morning during a flight in Michigan.
The plane strayed from a southward course when it reached the greater Muncie area, which it circled before hitting a tree line in northwestern Randolph County and crashed into the field along Ind. 28 east of
Fairview.
Kucharek told the AP that the decision to fire on a civilian plane would be made at the highest levels of the military, with likely involvement by the White House. Then -Vice President Dick Cheney had given the military permission to fire on incoming civilian aircraft during the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
Authorities on Wednesday night removed the body of the plane’s pilot — assumed to be the aircraft’s owner, David Joseph Eyde, 42, of Michigan. An autopsy was conducted Thursday at Ball Memorial Hospital, but formal identification was not expected to come before next week, after Randolph County Coroner Duane Petry and pathologists review Eyde’s medical and dental records.
Todd Fox, the National Transportation Safety Board investigator assigned to the case, said during a Thursday teleconference that a fire that engulfed the plane immediately after it crashed “consumed the majority of the cabin cockpit, including the passenger-occupant area.” The NTSB probe will focus in part on the plane’s oxygen system, some of which has been recovered at the crash site.
Authorities speculated Wednesday that the pilot might have lost consciousness due to a lack of oxygen when the plane reached an altitude of up to 25,000 feet.

The plane, a single-engine M20M Mooney, is

capable of flying at such heights, but

pilots are required to have supplemental

oxygen at altitudes of 14,000 feet or

higher.
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Fox said the plane’s pilot took off from a

Grand Rapids, Mich., airport at 9:44 a.m.

Wednesday, and informed air traffic

controllers he intended to make a “round-

robin flight” north to Traverse City, Mich.,

where he intended to turn around, without

landing, and head back to Grand Rapids.

The pilot — then flying at an altitude of

23,900 feet — said in a radio transmission

at 10:09 a.m. that he was making the turn to

return to Grand Rapids.

His last communication with controllers came

at 10:11 a.m., when the plane’s altitude was

at 25,000 feet.

The pilot did not respond to air traffic

controllers asking when he intended to make

a descent to land at Grand Rapids, at 10:39

a.m., and he was not heard from again.

“We have no indication of the pilot’s intent

to come to Muncie,” Fox said, and there was

no immediate explanation for why the plane

left its southbound course and circled the

Muncie area, beginning the wayward descent

that ended in Randolph County.

A preliminary report on the crash is

expected within two weeks, but a “factual”

report on the cause of the accident might

take up to a year to complete.

The plane, which lost both of its wings when

it struck trees near the Mississinewa River,

was removed from the corn field late

Wednesday, according to Indiana State Police

Sgt. Rod Russell.

The burned aircraft was taken to a salvage

yard near downtown Muncie, where it remained

on Thursday.

Delaware County Sheriff George Sheridan

credited local response to the crash to many

hours of training involving numerous police,

fire and ambulance agencies as well as a

speedy flow of information that began with

air traffic controllers then extended to

military authorities and the FBI then local

law enforcement.

Sheridan — who was completing a third day

of required firearms training on Muncie’s

east side at the time the emergency began —

was notified by a deputy of the wayward

plane.

“Communication from the state and Homeland

Security was coming into 911, and that

information was immediately relayed to us in

the field,” Sheridan said.

“It’s a matter of literally minutes how fast

all that goes,” the sheriff added. “These

agencies all train together. There’s a lot

of cross-pollination that goes on with these

agencies.

“I think yesterday’s response could be

attributed to the amount of training

everybody’s done since 9-11,” he added.

“From the air traffic controller once they

lost contact and the aircraft started coming

our way, all emergency services are notified

and it went all the way up and down the

chain the way it should.”

From

www.thestarpress.com/article/20091002/NEWS01

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