When there is a bomb threat on a plane that is in the air, and the air force scrambles fighter planes to accompany the plane, what is the point of that?
Is someone going to reach his hands out of the fighter and disable the bomb?
They might shoot the plane down if it headed for a big population center. They are supposed to divert it to a remote airport somewhere. In real life, we haven't really seen many bomb threats lately.
That applies if it's hijacked, but if there is a bomb threat, like there was today on two planes, it wouldn't be a good idea to shoot it down until one knew for sure there was a bomb ( and one that couldn't be found, removed, and thrown out the door).
Generally, to know for sure there is a bomb, they have to wait until the bomb explodes, and then it's either too late to shoot it down, or if the plane is still flying, either things won't get any worse or there's a second bomb** and we're back to the original situation
So why the fighter planes, like they did today?
**To stay safe, I always carry a bomb when I fly. What are the odds there will be two bombs on the same plane?
The answer was right below your question. They are not going to direct a plane that may have a bomb on it to a major airport.
His point is that it wasn't someone on the plane that said they have a bomb, etc. It was the typical phoned in BS fake bomb scare that AFAIK, has never turned out to be true. It seems virtually impossible that terrorists intent on hijacking a plane are going to call in a bomb scare to screw their own plan.
I think the answer to his question is that post 911 the US treats most of these things the same way. They've even sent the fighter jets up to escort planes with an unruly passenger. I guess in the case of a bomb, if it turned out to be real and went off, damaging the plane, but leaving it flyable, having a plane nearby could be of some benefit. The escort pilot would see what happened. And if it left the plane flyable, but damaged, the escort might be able to give the plane pilot some useful info as to the visible damage, etc. I think the bottom line is military pilots need some training hours anyway and no one wants to be the one that someone can later say, you should have, but you didn't....
The escort plane's primary purpose is to film the event. If they succeed in capturing good footage, the military can sell the segment to Hollywood.
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