Breaking News: US "Sky Marshal" on AA aircraft opens fire. [merged]

Unless you’re a product of my old school system. In that case we misspell habitually. 😉

Or perhaps because the official title for these officers is Federal Air Marshall yet Sky Marshall is still how they are referred to at times in the media. Only a guess.

Whatever they are called, ‘Marshal’ is still spelt with just one ‘L’

Moggy
Pedant 😉

Or perhaps because the official title for these officers is Federal Air Marshall yet Sky Marshall is still how they are referred to at times in the media. Only a guess.

Why is “sky marshall” in the thread title in inverted commas? Was there a thought that he wasn’t legal, or that he might have just been a traveling law enforcement officer who’d forgoten to hand his weapon over or something? – Nermal

Care to correct us please? How often/do you get them?

Mod Edit: That’s not a very sensible question to ask in this day and age, wozza. Remember: anybody could be reading this Forum.

GA

He added that the presence of air marshals in the US was “boosted dramatically post 9/11” and that pilots do not always know an air marshal is on board a flight.

Wrong.

Its ok, everyone makes mistakes!

Sorry didn’t see that.

Just to let you know this was posted last night :http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=51340

Pax Shot Dead ?

Not heard about this ?

An American Airlines passenger has reportedly been shot dead by an air marshal in Miami after claiming to have a bomb in a bag.

The shots were fired as the passenger attempted to flee into the terminal via a jetway – a bridge link – leading off the plane.

Local media reports say the passenger was hit as he put a hand into his carry-on bag.

A Homeland Security official said: “Shots were fired as the team attempted to subdue the subject.” The spokesperson said air marshals had pursued and ordered the passenger to get down on the ground. “The passenger then reached into his carry-on bag, at which point, consistent with air marshal training, the air marshals took the appropriate actions.” It is not clear whether the person was shot during a struggle or if he was running away from air marshals at the time.

The jet had landed at Miami International Airport and is currently on the tarmac. It is surrounded by heavily armed police and passengers are being taken off the plane – stopped at Gate D42. Flight 924 had flown in from Medellin in Columbia – it had been heading for Orlando.

American Airline Corporation spokesman Tim Smith confirmed: “There was an incident on the jet bridge on one of our aircraft in Miami.” Defence and security expert Francis Tusa told Sky News that anyone threatening to have a weapon on board a plane in America is “not going to get any mercy from US officials at all”.

He added that the presence of air marshals in the US was “boosted dramatically post 9/11” and that pilots do not always know an air marshal is on board a flight.

Things like this will do one of two things:

1) Teach people to stop being idiots and joking about having explosives in or around airports and airliners.

2) Encourage people to keep positive control of anyone with some sort of mental instability when they are travelling. The guy was married and his wife was on the plane with him. This is as much her fault as it is his, in my opinion. If she can’t keep him under control, he has no business, obviously, being on an airliner.

.. why not just shoot to injure as they weren’t actually in the air?

‘Shooting to injure’ is a Holywood concept with no application in the real world.

All law enforcement officers are trained to aim at the main body mass, the chest. This is the biggest target so they stand a better chance of hitting it, rather than aiming at (say) the gun hand and watching the bullet miss and sail off into the distance looking for a passer-by to annoy.

Even if a lucky round hits a limb it will not necessarily stop inside it, so it can still sail off into the distance etc…

Taxpayers tend to take exception to having the bullet that they paid for in the first place wind-up in their anatomy. They get very vexed.

A hit or two in the chest will generally stop the target, and most frequently they will die as a result.

The single exception to this rule is in the case of suicide bombers, where the head is the target of choice, for obvious reasons.

Moggy

According to NBC News and news services on MSN the passengers wife said her husband was bipolar, a mental illness formerly known as manic-depression, and had not had his medication.

Instead of the marshall shooting to kill why not just shoot to injure as they weren’t actually in the air?

if you’re injured, you can still pull the trigger for the bomb – if there was one. if the suspect is dead, he won’t be able to detonate the explosive. better be safe than sorry

According to NBC News and news services on MSN the passengers wife said her husband was bipolar, a mental illness formerly known as manic-depression, and had not had his medication.

Instead of the marshall shooting to kill why not just shoot to injure as they weren’t actually in the air?

Which ever way, still very sad for all involved in any way with what has happen.
No one wins when someone dies.

Paul

Yes sad if true, but once again a case of someone (the marshal) having a split second to choose between the death of one person or perhaps hundreds? Not easy and sadly inevitable given the times we live in.

The marshal did what he was trained to do and put on the aircraft to do, and that is prevent an act of terrorism. Whether the lad was a looney or not, the point is that’s why the marshal was on the aircraft

Well this isn’t going to last much longer in Commercial so I might as well say what I’m thinking.

As soon as I saw the way the report was written, with the immediate focus on the fact that the man “reached into the bag that the bomb was supposedly in” my mind went “Stockwell”. Like then, now it appears that it was just a man who hadnt been taking his medication. As with Stockwell we still dont know the full facts yet, but it looks like another innocent victim of the security we all now have to face up to 🙁

Yes sad if true, but once again a case of someone (the marshal) having a split second to choose between the death of one person or perhaps hundreds? Not easy and sadly inevitable given the times we live in.

Sad if the man was mentally ill, but just like the innocent Brazillian shot in London it is by no means a reason to relax again.

Well this isn’t going to last much longer in Commercial so I might as well say what I’m thinking.

As soon as I saw the way the report was written, with the immediate focus on the fact that the man “reached into the bag that the bomb was supposedly in” my mind went “Stockwell”. Like then, now it appears that it was just a man who hadnt been taking his medication. As with Stockwell we still dont know the full facts yet, but it looks like another innocent victim of the security we all now have to face up to 🙁

If the man was innocent, and it was just an unfortunate misunderstanding, I wonder if the U.S. Marshals will get as bad a press as the UK force did after the man was shot dead after he ran from the police in London tube station?