Bomb scare on flight to Dublin

Prestwick seems a bit out of the way on a flight from Paris to Dublin though. Wonder why they felt the need to fly it up there?

Edit: Just noticed on the Ryanair press release that they are providing 'refreshments and other facilities'. I wonder if they will be charginf for these or not.

It's probably the designated airport for emergencies of this nature.

Gosh I took that flight not long ago! :eek:

robinph wrote:

At which point in the flight over Ireland would they have to scramble one of these instead of one of these to intercept a passenger airliner that reported a bomb on board?

Damn, you beat me to it.

robinph wrote:

Do the air corp actually have anything that could shoot a threatening plane out of the sky, which would be the current response to any aircraft over Europe that ATC lost communication with?

Ehhh no.

As the later poster said, although the Air Corps Marchetti does have rockets in the nose cone, it wouldn't stand a hope of even being able to catch up with a commercial jet airliner.

...even if it could, the rockets have no IR/heat-seeking guidance system, so the pilot would have to be a damn good aim.

But I believe the defence forces have been investigating a new ground-to-air system recently. It involves giant 40-foot industrial-strength rubber-bands and e-voting machines, but the exact details are top-secret.

robinph wrote:

Prestwick seems a bit out of the way on a flight from Paris to Dublin though. Wonder why they felt the need to fly it up there?

Because Scotland is the most geographically distant place from London Air-Traffic-Control!

DublinWriter wrote:

Damn, you beat me to it.



Ehhh no.

As the later poster said, although the Air Corps Marchetti does have rockets in the nose cone, it wouldn't stand a hope of even being able to catch up with a commercial jet airliner.

...even if it could, the rockets have no IR/heat-seeking guidance system, so the pilot would have to be a damn good aim.

But I believe the defence forces have been investigating a new ground-to-air system recently. It involves giant 40-foot industrial-strength rubber-bands and e-voting machines, but the exact details are top-secret.

Lads, lads, lads, come on, at least get your facts straight before you go slagging off the Air Corps!

Firstly, "rockets in the nose cone" of a Marchetti? The "nose cone" of a Marchetti, as you put it, actually consists of the propeller and the spinner for it, seeing as it's a prop-powered aircraft. So I don't know how the hell they'd manage to fit rockets into the propeller itself.

The Marchetti's used to be armed with 2.75" rocket pods or machine gun pods under the wings where necessary. And yes, you read that right folks, I did say used to be armed, as in the past tense, because in case you didn't know (and seeing as the defence forces website hasn't been updated yet! :rolleyes: ) the Marchetti's have all been retired from service or are in the process of being retired. With the delivery of the two Eurocopter EC135's at the end of last year and the impending arrival of the four Agusta AB139's (2 expected to be delivered this year and 2 next year), the one remaining Gazelle helicopter and the four remaining Dauphin's have also recently been retired from service. Though, amazingly enough, the 40 year old plus Allouette III's are still in service and are expected to continue to be so for a while yet, even when the Air Corps takes delivery of the new choppers. Amazing to think that they've even outlasted the aircraft that were ordered to replace them, the Dauphins, isn't it? :rolleyes:

Anyway, back to the subject of the Marchetti's. In case you didn't know, the Air Corps has replaced them with these.....



..... the Pilatus PC-9M, a much more advanced and capable aircraft. Now, whilst being much faster than the old Marchetti's, they would still probably struggle to intercept an airliner. It's technically possible, yes, given the right conditions, intercept track and speed that the airliner in question is travelling but, in reality, it would be a difficult job. And even if one of the PC-9's could intercept and keep up with one, the Air Corps is still only arming them with rocket and gun pods like they did with the Marchetti's. The PC-9 can be armed with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, and some other countries which operate it have done so, but the Air Corps has no plans to do so with ours. Hence why we still need to call on the services of the RAF and their much faster, missile-armed Tornado jets to cover our airspace when these kinds of incidents arise. This will continue to be the case for many years to come because there are no plans presently for the Air Corps to ever aquire fast jets again so we are just going to have to accept the fact of British fighters flying in and protecting our airspace for the foreseeable future whether we like it or not, I'm afraid.

However, as for the "rubber band and e-voting machine" surface-to-air system you mentioned, well, you may be shocked to find that, in fact, the Army do actually have a proper surface-to-air missile system. In fact, when ole Georgie-boy dropped in to visit there last year or the year before, the Army actually deployed the system and had it on standby "just in case". So we're not quite as badly off in that department as you may think.

It was full of 70 odd Schoolgirls from Leo's in Carlow. Wouldn't surprise me for a minute if one of them was responsible, taking the p1ss with a note about a bomb. It was apparantly found in a magazine, I can see it now with them passing around a magazine and one of them wrote it messing, before long a panic ensues with an emergency landing.