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Mobile Phone found on a plane ... Is this over kill or what?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Is this over kill or what?
Do you think the captain made the right decision?
Personally I think turning back a flight in the circumstances was a panic reaction, if there was a real concern of a bomb why not divert to the nearest airport over a low population area, why turn around and head towards heathrow and some of the most populated cities in the country?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4791595.stm
'People nearby started to panic'
British Airways planes
BBC News website reader Matthew Robinson was on a British Airways flight from Heathrow to New York which was turned back after a mobile phone was heard ringing on the plane.
No one admitted owning the phone so the flight with 217 passengers on board returned to London as a precautionary measure.
I was sitting at the front of the plane - we'd probably been in the air for around an hour, maybe two, somewhere over Ireland.
A mobile phone started ringing at the back of the plane. No one claimed the phone as their own so people nearby started to panic and covered it up with pillows.
Passengers were already worried about flying because of the fear of a terrorist attack so the people near the phone had their concerns increased when no one admitted the phone was theirs so they panicked.
The captain came out to talk to the passengers towards the back of the plane and he eventually made the decision to turn the plane back to Heathrow.
We were then stuck at Heathrow again - this was after three hours delay for check-in and for US authorities to scrutinize the passenger list.
Nobody had their mobile phones with them to call friends and relatives so some of the staff passed theirs around - there were three phones being shared around with over 200 passengers.
BA then offloaded all the bags from the plane. We were handed a lost luggage claim form and told to fill it in and that we might get our luggage back in a few days.
We finally landed in New York at around 0330.
I had no phone, no laptop or car and house keys.
My house keys were in my luggage, so in the early hours of the morning I had to break into my own house, which set the alarm off and I had to explain to the police what had happened when they arrived to investigate the alarm.
It was thought that the phone could have been left from a previous flight that allowed them in hand luggage, but the crew didn't know where the plane had come from. It also could've been left by a cleaner. Obviously a gap in security somewhere.
Do you think the captain made the right decision?
Personally I think turning back a flight in the circumstances was a panic reaction, if there was a real concern of a bomb why not divert to the nearest airport over a low population area, why turn around and head towards heathrow and some of the most populated cities in the country?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4791595.stm
'People nearby started to panic'
British Airways planes
BBC News website reader Matthew Robinson was on a British Airways flight from Heathrow to New York which was turned back after a mobile phone was heard ringing on the plane.
No one admitted owning the phone so the flight with 217 passengers on board returned to London as a precautionary measure.
I was sitting at the front of the plane - we'd probably been in the air for around an hour, maybe two, somewhere over Ireland.
A mobile phone started ringing at the back of the plane. No one claimed the phone as their own so people nearby started to panic and covered it up with pillows.
Passengers were already worried about flying because of the fear of a terrorist attack so the people near the phone had their concerns increased when no one admitted the phone was theirs so they panicked.
The captain came out to talk to the passengers towards the back of the plane and he eventually made the decision to turn the plane back to Heathrow.
We were then stuck at Heathrow again - this was after three hours delay for check-in and for US authorities to scrutinize the passenger list.
Nobody had their mobile phones with them to call friends and relatives so some of the staff passed theirs around - there were three phones being shared around with over 200 passengers.
BA then offloaded all the bags from the plane. We were handed a lost luggage claim form and told to fill it in and that we might get our luggage back in a few days.
We finally landed in New York at around 0330.
I had no phone, no laptop or car and house keys.
My house keys were in my luggage, so in the early hours of the morning I had to break into my own house, which set the alarm off and I had to explain to the police what had happened when they arrived to investigate the alarm.
It was thought that the phone could have been left from a previous flight that allowed them in hand luggage, but the crew didn't know where the plane had come from. It also could've been left by a cleaner. Obviously a gap in security somewhere.
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Comments
http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/other/0,39020682,39277839,00.htm
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2162330/sony-faces-225m-battery-charge
Same here.
Also, yes, right decision. That COULD have been a remote bomb. Just shows even with the new regulations, just how easy it would be to blow a plane out the fucking sky.
Could have been, but even more likely it was just a normal mobile phone that someone left behind by mistake .. and since it had already rung once chances are that's exactly what it was.
If they were already over Ireland they should have diverted to the closest airport not back to where they came from, passing by airports in Wales, Bristol, etc to get back to Heathrow.
In fact if it was a bomb trigger they risked more lives on the ground by flying over such populated areas.
Plays right into the Govt hands.
Maybe they wanted to suffocate it...
quickly departs the area... :thumb:
If it was a good bomb, as soon as it rung... BOOM! Dead.
However, we know terrorist bombs are shoddy, and sometimes don't work. As such, why take a risk of a dodgey bomb on the plane and carry on? What if they phone again and it works?
Yeah, fuck knows what the pillows achieved though. You shouldn't even touch fucking bombs... muppets.
Yeah that's what I was thinking. I do think they overreacted (sheesh! It's a phone, people!), but I figure the staff were just following policy or something & would have got bollocked if they'd ignored it. But surely if you were worried about there being a bomb on the plan you'd want to land ASAP rather than fly all the way back the way you came, for at least an hour. Does turning the plane round magically stop bombs going off or something?
To be honest given that this isn't a trained journalist and we don't know the full facts I could give several plausible reasons why they returned to Heathrow.
Ireland refused landing permission. The type of plane wasn't suitable for landing at Irish airports. The correspendent has his positioning wrong. The aircrew returned due to people panicing, rather than they thought it was a bomb and sought to minimise disruption by returning to a UK airport, etc, etc