USA detains BA passengers for 3 hours

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 18:42:50 +0000, Lansbury
wrote:

So then you know exactly what the person(s) who decided to hold the
flight knew and can explain why based on that information they made the
wrong choice?

It would be good etiquette for you to post the message you are
responding to so we know what the hell you are talking about.

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:10:39 GMT, john
wrote:

It would be good etiquette for you to post the message you are
responding to so we know what the hell you are talking about.

As you are using Agent it will have threaded the message properly so you
can tell to which I am responding.

--
Lansbury
www.uk-air.net
FAQs for the alt.travel.uk.air newsgroup

so you are incacpable of reading a thread TITLE?

"john" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 18:42:50 +0000, Lansbury
wrote:

So then you know exactly what the person(s) who decided to hold the
flight knew and can explain why based on that information they made the
wrong choice?

It would be good etiquette for you to post the message you are
responding to so we know what the hell you are talking about.

Lansbury wrote:
Pathetic paranoia.
What would have done differently and why?

This was an international flight. It had landed safely. Why not just let the
folks though normal customs/immigration with the caveat that
customs/immigration would be told to be far more vigilant for pax that
deplaned that flight ?

Luggage could have been x-rayed before being sent to the belts in the customs hall.

Seems to me that this was a publicity stunt for the Bush regime to portray
themselves as the great protectors of the gullible american public who are
kept in an artificial fear of terrorists.

"nonody" schreef in bericht
...
This was an international flight. It had landed safely. Why not just let
the
folks though normal customs/immigration with the caveat that
customs/immigration would be told to be far more vigilant for pax that
deplaned that flight ?

Luggage could have been x-rayed before being sent to the belts in the
customs hall.

Seems to me that this was a publicity stunt for the Bush regime to portray
themselves as the great protectors of the gullible american public who are
kept in an artificial fear of terrorists.

Hear, hear. These acts of reverse security or whatever they call it are just
plain stupid. A plane has flown all the way from London to Washington
without anything unusual happening. As you say, why can't they just send the
passengers via normal (perhaps strict) immigration and customs controls?

The US government is just punishing European airlines and trying to get
people to fly on US-based airlines again. Time for European police to
"reverse check' a couple of US airliners and let the passengers suffer for 4
hours on the tarmac.

Sjoerd

Dick Locke wrote:
inside the plane. Assume that if there was a bomb in the
less-well-screened luggage or cargo it would have exploded before
landing.

And if they *really* feared that there was a bomb on board, or any other
terrorist possibility, they would have allowed the plane to get to jetway
without any hint that the FBI were aware of it. And they certaintlty wouldn't
have kept all passengers emprioned in the plane for 3 hours if they thhought a
bomb might explode, and they wouldn't have kept all those passengers
emprisoned in the plane for 3 hours with all the police flashing lights around
the plane, which might have triggered the terrorists to take hostages etc etc.

Does anyone know if all pilots on board that aircraft "ejected" from the
cockpit as soon as the plane came to a complete stop ? (do all planes have
ropes that allow pilots to egress ?)

Or were they also kept hostage by the FBI, and in the event that the FBI had
triggered any terrorists to start something on the plane, they could have then
forced pilots to take off again.

If this was NOT a PR ploy by the Bush regime, then the Bush regime should fire
whoever was responsible for the decision to keep hundreds of passengers in a
plane for 3 hours when they suspected terrorists might do something.

I doubt that the USA media will focus on the stupidity of this accident and
they will prefer to portray it as yet another example of how their beloved
government is protecting americans from terrorism.

The real axis of evil is Cheney Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. I bet they wouldn't
accept that the UN bring in inspectors to the USA to inventory the stockpiles
of bio, cheminal and other weapons of mass destruction that the USA has.

On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 19:52:48 GMT, "DALing"
daling43[delete]-at-hotmail.com wrote:

so you are incacpable of reading a thread TITLE?

"john" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 18:42:50 +0000, Lansbury
wrote:

So then you know exactly what the person(s) who decided to hold the
flight knew and can explain why based on that information they made the
wrong choice?

It would be good etiquette for you to post the message you are
responding to so we know what the hell you are talking about.

Hey, asshole, there are MANY responses in the thread. Lansbury should
reference the message he is referring to.

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:45:28 +0000, Lansbury
wrote:

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:10:39 GMT, john
wrote:

It would be good etiquette for you to post the message you are
responding to so we know what the hell you are talking about.

As you are using Agent it will have threaded the message properly so you
can tell to which I am responding.

There are MANY responses in the thread.

You ONLYwrote your own comments in the message.

How are we going to figure out what you are referring to?

On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 18:42:50 +0000, Lansbury
wrote:

So then you know exactly what the person(s) who decided to hold the
flight knew and can explain why based on that information they made the
wrong choice?

No, and I don't think you do either, but let's have at it anyway....

Since they didn't find anyone and kept a few hundred people detained
for a few hours, I think it's self-evident he/she made a wrong choice,
of course for understandable and admirable reasons. (unless you
believe that the present US administration would do this for political
reasons...then change "of course" to "probably" or "possibly"
depending on your level of mistrust.)

Perhaps it's what the decision maker doesn't know or doesn't believe
that's a problem....he/she doesn't believe it's wrong to hold a few
hundred people for a few hours in moderately strict conditions because
one or more might be up to something. It appears he/she didn't know
that one of the names on the suspect list was a five year old.
(assuming that's true.) He's operating at the tail end of a chain of
events that are largely policy issues and with a severely limited
knowledge base.

Here's another thing that could be done better (and again, not by the
on-the scene decision maker).....part of the problem seems to be that
the various schemes of transliterating Arabic alphabet lead to
ambiguities and confusion. Why the heck aren't names entered into the
immigration data base and terrorist data base in the original writing
scheme?? Add to the list of "didn't knows" the name of the alleged
terrorist in the original alphabet.

"nonody" wrote in message
...
Lansbury wrote:
Pathetic paranoia.
What would have done differently and why?

This was an international flight. It had landed safely. Why not just let
the
folks though normal customs/immigration with the caveat that
customs/immigration would be told to be far more vigilant for pax that
deplaned that flight ?

Have you been to the international arrivals hall at any US airport? The
passengers on many flights are mingled together.

Want to empty the terminal at Dulles or elsewhere? I'll bet that spreading
the contents of a small bag of flour would do it.

I wonder if the "bad guys" have discovered which communication channels are
being monitored so they can pull the tail of the tiger - so to speak. The
more successful they are, the more times the authorities cry "Wolf!!", and
eventually get completely ignored/discredited.

Luggage could have been x-rayed before being sent to the belts in the
customs hall.

Except I doubt that any major airport is designed for baggage flow like
that. The X-rays are for the bags coming from the checkin - not from the
planes.

Seems to me that this was a publicity stunt for the Bush regime to portray
themselves as the great protectors of the gullible american public who are
kept in an artificial fear of terrorists.

Years ago someone had the following signature on their newsgroup messages:

"Don't ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained by stupidity."