WI: Foreign Airliners used in 9/11

[Ying Blanc]

Watching a documentary last night, a rather well put together one with no commentary but just found-media to create a timeline of what everybody saw almost live on that day, made me have a thought.

All the planes used in the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Pentagon and crashed in Pennsylvania were all American airliners, United Airlines and American Airlines. But I was thinking, what would the effects be if they were foreign airliners, say like British Airways, Air France, Air Canada, KLM, Air Japan etc? I can tell it could be far diplomatically worse, with maybe slightly to far more foreign deaths in the attacks and the fact that Al-Qaeda would have attacked not just 1 nation, but potentially 5 different nations at once.

 

[Fubart Solman]

Air Canada would be the most likely if we're talking about planes coming from out of the country. I think that the terrorists wanted to have nearly a full tank of gas for crashing into whatever buildings.

I think that they chose American airlines (not capitalized on purpose) because their goal was to attack the American government and people. It would be interesting if they used Russian airlines due to Russia's invasion of Afghanistan 25 years or so before; either Russian or Canadian airlines would probably be the most likely due to political ramifications and practicality.

 

[Alex1guy]

Remember also that hijacking a domestic flight is easier to co-ordinate timing, remember they need the planes to be hitting fairly close together otherwise the US would start scrambling fighters. It's harder if the flights come from different locations around the world and pre-9/11 domestic was less strict than international so easier to sneak weapons aboard.

 

[Ying Blanc]

I wasn't really talking about flights being hijacked on the way into the US, but more the flights being hijacked from US airports on the way to another country.

 

[sparky42]

I wasn't really talking about flights being hijacked on the way into the US, but more the flights being hijacked from US airports on the way to another country.

I think the international sections of US airports still had higher security procedures than internal flights at the time though I'm open for correction on that.

 

[Dub_Phil]

Well the transatlantic flights usually take off in the evening (to arrive in Europe in the morning) so they'd have killed less by hijacking those.

 

[Alex1guy]

I think the international sections of US airports still had higher security procedures than internal flights at the time though I'm open for correction on that.

That's what I would have thought, customs and baggage check isn't as strict on domestic generally, pre-9/11 it was probably even more relaxed.