TA-THREATS: Israeli Air Force Diverts Lufthansa Jet with Bomb Threat

I'm sure that must have been a scary experience for the passengers.

People may not realize the seriousness of such things at first glance. It was a phone call. No one had actually found a bomb or anything, so why the concern, right? Well regardless of whether you agree with Israel's politics and actions or not you have to admit they do have a wee little problem with people using explosives on them (I'm not interested in opinions on why, rather an acceptance by all that people set off bombs in Israel).

When dealing with a record like that, you have no choice but to take such things seriously. Aside from which, at least where I come from (NYC) calling people up and telling them there's a bomb somewhere is illegal and will always lead to an investigation of the threatened site. When I was in college we were evacuated numerous times for bomb threats. It's a precaution, no one wants to ignore a bomb threat and say oops after it blows up.

Pain in the ass, you bet! But I think Israel did the right thing in being cautious.

This gives travelers good reason to have serious reservations about travellingto Israel by air. This was a scheduled flight headed to Israel. According to the report, Israel perceived a threat based only on a telephone call. What consideration did Israel give to the safety of the passengers and flight crew? Israel perceives a threat based on questionable evidence and passes the danger and responsibility off to its neighbors and exposes the jet, passengers, and crew to danger of harm based only on an unconfirmed telephone threat? What if no neighboring country was willing to accept the flight? What if the flight crew had said it had no option but to land in Israel. What would Israel have done then?

dubiousone, I think you misunderstood the whole thing. The decision to land the plane in Larnaca was based on nothing but the will to defend its passangers (and most of them were Israelis).

"What if no neighboring country was willing to accept the flight? What if the flight crew had said it had no option but to land in Israel?"

Those are unrelated questions. The decision to land the plane in a foreign country is not done by guessing that everything will be ok.
If the plane was unable to land anywere else, it would, of course, land in Israel. What did you thought?

There's going to be more of these bomb scares on planes I just think its just a new tatic there trying out. And I hope there really is never one abord a plane just Remeinds me of what the IRA used to do at times. Here's a link to the one that was grounded yesterday that I posted on ats, ATSNN

[edit on 5/10/2004 by SE7EN]

In response to Transc3ndent:

No, transc3ndent, the posted story states:

Israeli jet fighters have forced an incoming Lufthansa airliner to land in Cyprus after a bomb alert that German officials had not considered serious.

The article quoted by the posted story states (the following quote contsins portions of the article - follow the link above to the article):

Israeli jet fighters have prevented an incoming Lufthansa airliner from landing after a bomb alert that German officials had not considered serious.

"We wanted to fly to Tel Aviv but the Israeli authorities forced us to land in Larnaca," said a Lufthansa official.

Six passenger jets - including three Greek planes - have now been diverted after bomb hoaxes in the last 10 days.

German security officials concluded that the threat was a false alarm and authorised the plane to continue its journey to Tel Aviv, the Israeli newpsaper Ma'ariv reported on its website.

Israeli transport minister Meir Shirit instructed the plane to land in Cyprus as a precaution, the newspaper added.

Not again this is about the 6th-8th bomb scare on an airline in the past 2 weeks, wtf is going on?

Does all these scares tie together somehow?

Is some terrorist group testing something out?

It just all seems strange to me.