Erez, That is enough. Living in that land is for a lot of parties not the healthiest. Calming down isn’t a bad choice. Better safe then sorry.

PLA, I’m sick and tired of ignoring your ever lasting trials to hijack threads to the political stage. Stop doing it. We’ve already discussed it privately. It’s not helping anyone.

Erez, why do you think that’s risky? If the plane would be directed towards Uvda or another airbase based south, it still wouldn’t be allowed to fly near the big cities.

Because Israel doesn’t end in Tel-Aviv 🙂
Remember that on the way to Uvda there are Mitzpe Ramon, Be’er Sheva, and a bit after it there are Eilat and Yotvata. There are a few places in the Negev with quite a lot of population in them. Not to mention the nuclear reactor in Dimona.

There is no problem about Israels wish, to divert the flight to Larnaca as a precaution measure. Nothing more and nothing less.

OK, so stop bringing all the related (and non related) reasons in the world why we are so wrong and over nervous.

And possibly risking the lives of the people on the plane and on Cyprus instead.

I imagine the idea of Germany forcing an El Al airplane that has bomb warning out of our airspace with fighters and forcing it to land in Switzerland.

You don’t really believe that we would let a civilian plane go down in the water don’t you?
What kind of devils do you think we are?
You (that is, everybody) should understand one geographical fact – our eastern (and only) coast to the Med. sea in completely populated. We can’t bring it down in even an AFB with no population around it, like Uvda, without going over populated areas.
In different countries, a bomb reported plane would be flying over non populated areas and be landed in an AFB.
Israel is not a European country. Our size is too small for mistakes.

I think Sens has hit a nice one with his comment that the reason for the diversion was more a political one than an actual one. And seeing Erez’ (and nirav’s) replies here, there is quite a bit of appeal to terrorism-paranoia.

I do hope next time a hijacked/bomb-reported plane is inbound for Cyprus, they divert it to Israel though. Stupid act of paranoia, it’ll make dozens of people wait in vain for their loved ones and ruin quite a few business meetings.

Arthur, don’t tell me about being paranoid. I’m going to put it as simple as possible – they said you may have a bomb on the plane? you might not be able not enter Israel.
AND THAT’S IT. No further questions. I’m sure those extremely important bussiness meetings could wait, only to completely remove the fear it might explode over our country.
And I don’t find this:

Ah, no wonder the Israelis were closing their airspace. They know of El Al’s inventive way of using airliners against high-rise buildings

comment amusing. Why don’t you go find yourself some topics to moderate?
You are desperately needed in other places.

Did Cyprus accept the landing or Israeli planes? Is it checked in Cyprus? About Israel and guiding to to Cyprus. Well. If the plane does not follow the instruction then it is even in Holland allowed to shoot down. I would be wondered if that is different for Israeli case.

I’m pretty sure they did.
I am not so familiar with the international laws of civil aviation, but I do know that planes that come to Israel from the west, need to contact on their way quite a few regional flight centers. The last flight center before Tel Aviv is in Cyprus, so they were under their resposiblity.

I don’t know the arrangments they made.
Cyprus is also much less populated than the center of Israel.
On different cases I know that some planes were escorted to Uvda AFB in the negev desert.
I believe the most fair thing to do was to bring it back to Germany, where it came from. It’s a 747, I’m pretty sure it was possible.

No there wasn’t.
First of all, there were planty of Israelis on that plane too.
Second of all, the checks we do for passangers going out of Israel are much more serious than the checks that are made in other countries. El-Al is the safest airliner in the world. There shouldn’t be any reason why we will be forced to land because of a suspected security failure.
And because unfortunately we are a country that has years of experience with terror, I think that we will understand if some country wouldn’t permit an El-Al plane to land in it because of a terror alert.

Well, he simply told him that if he’ll try to enter the Israeli airspace he will be shot down.
Plus, since the pilot isn’t a terrorists, he understood why we are asking him to land in Cyprus. He was told that maybe there are explosives on his plane.

just as the recent bush/kerry debate shows, its clear that there is a big difference between someone convincing themselves and also convincing others. :diablo:

we have been through all this before, and those blurry pics cant conclusively prove one theroy over the other, and this new pic doesnt show anything concrete either, so i really cant see the point in going through this all again and wasting yet more space.

when clearer pics come out, all this will be resolved beyond doubt and it will be someone’s turn to say, ‘i told u so’. just dont be too sure that that somebody will be u. 😎 😉

Yeah well mark my words then… and time will tell :dev2:

Watch out Big**ne, you don’t want to connect to ICQ :diablo: