Bush Gives Air Force the Right to Shoot Down ANY Hijacked Planes

Flying was never overly safe to begin with. Plane crashes happen, planes are like 20 to 30 years old, tons of things. You can just throw hijacking onto the other dangerous things, so all I can say is take a deep breath, and hope everything works out.

 

Once your plane is hijacked, I would think that being shot down by US fighters would be no worse than being stabbed to death as a show of strength of the hijackers or having your plane crashed into a building.

 

That's the key. Not just any hijacked plane, but one which represents "clear and present danger to any city in America."

If it was obvious what was going to happen on 9-11, and we knew that the entire passenger list would be killed regardless of any action taken by us, but we could save x-number of people in danger of the plane's path on the ground, then shooting it down should be an option.

Don't panic -- he didn't authorize the shooting down of ANY hijacked plane, just planes presenting a "clear and present danger to any city in America."

 

<B>Flying was never overly safe to begin with. Plane crashes happen, planes are like 20 to 30 years old, tons of things. You can just throw hijacking onto the other dangerous things, so all I can say is take a deep breath, and hope everything works out.</B>

Outside of hijackings and the like, airplanes were actually the safest way of travelling, when compared to cars, buses, and trains.

 

Safer over cars and buses, sure. Safer over trains? I am thinking you have support for the statement, it is just surprising to me. Even if true, I am wondering if top notch high-speed trains (Europe) are riskier than ariline travel in 1st world countries. A good thing that could come out of the terrible events would be momentum for America to develop high-speed mass transit.

I would venture to say Airline travel right now is about as statistically as safe as you can be (safer than air travel before the events and road travel anytime anywhere). But I admit that statistical plausibility isn't going on here much, visualizing your car hitting a tree a 60 MPH just isn't the same visualizing as your plane going down, even if the consequences are the same and the car wreck may be more painful to boot. Further, when it comes to cars, everyone thinks it is the other guy that will be hit (forgetting that you can be hit by an idiot or a drunk while doing everything right) where when it comes to air travel you have no real, or false, sense of control over what happens.

 

Out of all of the bad things that have happened, if high speed trains became a reality, I'd be stoked.

 

Maybe the Europeans have it down better, but Amtrak certainly seems to derail frequently.

 

I'm gonna have to disagree with this. Planes were always considered among the safest ways to travel. Think about how many plane crashes occur daily that aren't terrorist-related. There aren't many. They're 20-30 years old, but they're inspected to a far greater degree than your ordinary car.

 

You have a point Doc. Many of the plane crashes tend to be personal planes, but I would think that you're more likely to get in a car accident or something then be on a plane that is hijacked. Especially with security being stepped up.