What could a fighter jet do if a plane goes rogue in a terrorism situation. Surely they can’t push the plane in a certain direction to prevent them causing harm the plane is too big and that’s a recipe for disaster all round. Shooting the plane down has its own complications especially if flying over populated area.
What could they actually do in a code red situation?
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If the plane is hijacked and terrorists are in control, the fighter jets will absolutely shoot the plane down. It’s essentially a lose-lose situation, where shooting down the plane will kill all onboard and potentially many on the ground, and doing nothing could result in a magnitude more fatalities like 9/11.
The idea is to stop the jet with the least amount of fatalities, such as bringing it down over the ocean vs over a populated area. If they did have to bring it down over a populated area it’s to keep it from getting to a major population center ie, Upstate NY vs New York City
To shoot the plane down. Sure, it could cause problems if shot down over a populated area, but most areas aren’t populated much less densely. And as we saw from 9/11 what would be worse – a plane being shot down and destroying and damaging a few houses, or hitting a building with thousands of people in it?
Plus having someone that could take you down at any second COULD (unlikely but possible) exert additional pressure on the terrorists such that they might decide to back down.
All they can do is shoot the plane down or wreck into it, otherwise it’s just a bully tactic to comply
IF the plane is going to be crashed into a target killing everyone onboard and you can’t stop the terrorists from crashing the plane, shooting down the plane can be the least worst option, it isn’t the best outcome, but sometimes there are no good outcomes once the situation gets past a certain point.
The “complications” are just an accepted part of the gambit here. Either you bring down that plane by force on your own terms knowing more or less what will happen if you do, or you do nothing and leave that plane free to do who knows what else.
You also have to set an example for other future rogue planes. If you do nothing because you’re too afraid of the collateral damage you’ll cause, that just teaches future would-be hijackers that the jets following them aren’t a threat. Demands without teeth aren’t demands, they are suggestions.
After 9/11, the plane would almost certainly be shot down. We will no longer risk people turning commercial jets into missiles
Shooting down a plane will kill everyone inside.
However: a plane that has been blown to bits presents much less threat to people on the ground than a plane intentionally flown into a target.
For starters, the jet fuel will no longer be contained and will disperse over a wide area. This makes it much less of a fire hazard.
Second, the broken up debris from an airplane is less aerodynamic than the plane itself. That means they travel much slower than the plane. While big chunks of debris can do damage to things and people on the ground, ideally the fighter would shoot the plane down over unpopulated areas.
But the other reason to send a fighter jet up is just intimidation. To let the terrorists know they will be shot down before they ever mange to fly the plane at a target.
Finally, militaries will scramble fighter jets in other kinds of emergencies simply so the fighter can assess the state of the airplane from the outside. The fighter jet can see if the plane is damaged and can look inside the windows to see if the pilot or passengers are conscious in the case of “ghost planes”.
On 9/11 there was at least one fighter jet that was unarmed when it was scrambled. The pilot understood that she was to fly her jet into an airliner that had been overtaken by terrorists
[link](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/fighter-pilot-reflects-911-suicide-mission/story?id=79898230)
I’m not super knowledgeable just something else that crossed my mind.
I’m assuming most likely the highjacked plane has shut off its transponders. Having the escorts there if nothing else gives them eyes on the plane to try to see what its plans may be.
Shoot it down. At this point it’s a terrible numbers game. Lose 500 people on the plane and where it lands or 3000 people if/when it crashed into a full highrise?
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