Fighter Jets Scramble Following Reports of Multiple Threats to Passenger Planes, Officials Say
Source: ABC News
May 25, 2015, 1:48 PM ET
By MEGHAN KENEALLY and JOSH MARGOLIN
An Air France plane was escorted to JFK Airport in New York City this morning after an anonymous threat was made against the flight -- one of several threats made to multiple airplanes bound for different U.S. airports, law enforcement officials told ABC News.
The FBI said the plane has since been checked and cleared with "no incidents or hazards reported on board the flight by either the passengers or its crew."
Authorities said that the decision to have the plane escorted by two fighter jets was done "out of an abundance of caution" after the Maryland State Police McHenry Barrack, in Garrett County received an anonymous call of a chemical weapons threat aboard Air France Flight 22, which was en route from Paris to New York City airport.
The threat was not considered to be credible as law enforcement and aviation officials told ABC News that they are responding to multiple, unconfirmed threats to multiple airplanes bound for different airports. emorial Day in the U.S. and also a holiday in France the day after Pentecost Sunday, otherwise known as Whit Sunday.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/fighter-jets-scramble-escort-air-france-flight-threat/story?id=31289047
Hoppy
(3,595 posts)that is inside the plane?
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Hoppy
(3,595 posts)CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)... are there to shoot the plane down should it appear to be targeting populated areas.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)okaawhatever
(9,457 posts)shot down before the hijackers could ram it into the White House but the jets took off so fast they weren't loaded with their missiles. The two jet pilots were going to have to ram their planes into the passenger airline in a safe location to minimize casualties. They ultimately didn't have to because that is the plane the passengers tried to take over, but can you imagine the things everyone had to do that day?
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)what terrorism has done to this planet. That was a horrid day.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)It's frightening what the media has done.
Your much more likely to be killed by a cop or medical misadventure. The world is not a scary or frightening if you look at statistics.
There are those who would like us to cower in fear, AIDS, drugs, now terrorists. Ignore them.
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)not because I fear dying from a terrorist attack but frightening because of what it's done to our psyche. To be honest, I do fear for my best friend and her children who live in Paris. Despite the fact the odds of any of them being involved in a terror attack is low considering the population, that doesn't make me worry any less, and I choose not to ignore it as you suggested. The ten calls today hinting at threats to passenger aircraft proves we can and should be worried about what isn't probable, as much as what is.
There is no question the media ramps up the tension, but I'll bet any person who was on one of those planes today felt concern, possibly even fear from the threat. Should we live our lives in fear? No. Should we recognize the threats are there? Yes. Some things can not be ignored.
By the way, I had friends who died of AIDS.... I would never ignore them regardless of what anyone suggests.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)Some time in the early years of the 20th century, a virus affecting chimpanzees in West Africa made the leap into a human. It mutated, adapting itself to its new host, and started to spread across Africa.
For the West, though, the story of HIV starts in LA, back in 1981, when a few people started showing up to clinics with pneumonia. It was a strain of pneumonia you get when you dont have too much of an immune system, and doctors were puzzled. These people were young; it was as if theyd turned up with MRSA or arthritis. It was the kind of disease their grandmothers were supposed to have. Then, from the same groups mostly gay men and drug users came an equally rare and puzzling skin cancer: Kaposis sarcoma. The dots were joined, and public health officials started groping around for a name for this new condition: Gay-Related Immune Deficiency? 4H (Haitians, homosexuals, hemophiliacs and heroin users) disease? As the cases became outbreaks, and the outbreaks became an epidemic, they hit upon Aids: a stigma-free choice. It was not to be a stigma-free disease.
The virus was finally isolated in two rival labs at the same time, and the findings were published in the same journal. Its 30 years this month since the discovery of HIV, and theres now a sense the story is entering its last chapter, at least in the UK. Medical advances particularly in antiretroviral therapy means that its extremely rare to die of HIV/Aids. Mothers no longer need pass it on to their children. The rate of infection is getting lower and lower.
But in the British story of HIV, one moment overshadows the rest. If you were alive at the time, theres little chance youll have forgotten the 1980s scare campaigns the menacing Tombstone and Iceberg adverts, which said: There is now a deadly virus, which anyone can catch from sex with an infected person
If you ignore Aids, it could be the death of you.
At that point, the infection rate was at its height, and these campaigns have been associated with its decline. But they also lingered in the public imagination ever since. In the long run, did they help? Or did they leave a damaging legacy?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/marthagilltech/100013418/thirty-years-after-the-discovery-of-hiv-the-1980s-scaremongering-still-causes-harm/
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)but as a microbiologist involved in HIV/AIDS research during the 80s... I really don't need a lecture and I clearly haven't forgotten.
Fear can be from an immediate threat, or it can be borne by ignorance and fear. Thankfully, medical advances are helping extend the live span of HIV/AIDS patients. Ignorance and fear are harder to eradicate.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)When you confused the fear of AIDS with the disease of AIDS. Hoping you'll have a better holiday, seems like your having a tough day.
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)However, you're certainly on your high horse tonight. Funny how twisted these threads become.... this starts out as a discussion on the threats to the planes this morning and you turn it into comment about how it's the media fault and then issue an edict on AIDS and drugs and my vacation. Who's confused here?
I don't know whether to laugh or... no... I'll laugh....
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)I like to pretend I know who needs lectures too. We can feel so much more clever about ourselves than otherwise warranted. Quite self-validating.
It's also fun to minimize the people to whom we lecture with bumper-sticker like insincerity.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)Instead, federally-funded campaigns sought to address a large number of people from all backgrounds--male, female, homosexual or heterosexual. The America Responds to AIDS campaign, created by the CDC, ran from 1987 to 1996 and became a central part of the "everyone is at risk" message of AIDS prevention.
This poster spoke to parents about the challenges of talking to a teenager about AIDS, but stressed that the issue was relevant and important to young Americans.
The campaign was met with mixed feelings by AIDS workers. "The posters really do help ameliorate the fear of hatred of people with AIDS," Brier explains. "Theres a notion that everyone is at risk, and thats important to talk about, but theres also the reality that not everyone is at risk to the same extent." Some AIDS organizations, especially those providing service to communities at the highest risk for contracting HIV, saw the campaign as diverting money and attention away from the communities that needed it the most--leaving gay and minority communities to compete with one another for the little money that remained. As New York Times reporter Jayson Blair wrote in 2001 (, "Much of the government's $600 million AIDS-prevention budget was used...to combat the disease among college students, heterosexual women and others who faced a relatively low risk of contracting the disease."
Beyond campaigns that tried to generalize the AIDS epidemic, a different side used the fear of AIDS to try and affect change. These posters, contained under the section "Fear Mongering" in the exhibit's digital gallery, show ominous images of graves or caskets behind proclamations of danger.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-confusing-and-at-times-counterproductive-1980s-response-to-the-aids-epidemic-180948611/#5K3Itwsc1gcjmvFT.99
AuntPatsy
(9,904 posts)Joe Shlabotnik
(5,604 posts)FailureToCommunicate
(14,007 posts)Last edited Tue May 26, 2015, 09:58 PM - Edit history (1)
all in our heads, concocted by a malevolent media.
Your premise falls particularly flat on this day of memorial to all those who served...and paid with their lives.
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)Some people do not understand the threat exists... no matter how improbable it may be or how remote the chances are that any of us could die from a terrorist attack, or for that matter, a disease.
Very sorry for the loss of your friends. My father worked in the World Trade Center and was there during the first attack. He retired shortly before 9-11. One month earlier and he would have been in his office by the time the first plane hit. Those experiences have an impact and heighten our awareness.
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)a fighter jet is whizzing along with you...I would be freaked out...
elleng
(130,731 posts)CTyankee
(63,889 posts)My son picked me up and drove me all the way to New Haven. I was relieved...
mnhtnbb
(31,373 posts)CTyankee
(63,889 posts)everything was so uneventful...a nice ending to a great trip. Sorry to confuse...
mnhtnbb
(31,373 posts)and landed in the Azores. Of course it took them almost a week to get home since
everything was grounded for several days.
I can't imagine what it would be like to see fighter jets off the wings of a commercial flight.
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)olddots
(10,237 posts)and the media/fear corporations are on top . sorry .
Aristus
(66,286 posts)Takes appropriate precautionary action, instead of saying: "All right, ya covered yer ass. What's next?"
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Their mission never seems to hit the PR targets
Hoppy
(3,595 posts)guys in Florida who were gonna blow up the Sears Tower. All that was between them and the tower collapsing was three pair of Timberland boots. If they had gotten those boots, the Sears Tower would'a been history.
Peace Patriot
(24,010 posts)And so fast, too--so on the ball! Great at getting up into the air and flying in the right direction. Almost...
...always.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)"The plane is 10 miles out. Do the orders still stand?"
"Of course the orders still stand! Have you heard anything to the contrary?"
bpj62
(999 posts)This sounds exactly like the plot to the 1996 movie starrinmg Kurt Russell. Someone may have been watching this movie and got a bright idea.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)Get out the duct tape.
dorkzilla
(5,141 posts)Flights were cancelled, lots of delays...we were sitting on the runway in Pisa an the pilot kept saying our delay in takeoff was due to increased activity in Europe. We missed our connector to Frankfurt and the ticket agent said we couldn't fly out till today, but I asked her to route us back to JFK via Heathrow which they did. I didn't know all this had happened till we landed. I'm glad I didn't!!
Mz Pip
(27,430 posts)I'm flying to Paris on Air France in about 2 weeks.