Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Not all planes with 2 engines can stay in the air running on the one engine, such as the beechcraft baron. Even with just the pilot, if the one engine was the fail you won't be able to keep it in the air for long.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

I know... I was only joking. :rolleyes: If you wanna get serious, I wrote my university dissertation on airline security, as I was working for Air France at the time and had access-all-areas at Orly airport. But I much prefer being lighthearted.

See above.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Useful article from the CAA

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/7/DAP_EIS04.pdf

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

Living under the Heathrow approach is a fact of life for thousands, including me.

It's worth checking the photographs of what damage the Cessna did in 1994 - it hit the lawn and bounced into the White House.

Mind you, the plane that hit the Pirelli Building in Milan did a fair bit more damage. Modern space frame buildings are more susceptible than older masonry structures like the White House and Capitol - it would indeed bounce off either of those.

You can fill a Cessna 172 with about 400kg of stuff, including pilot and fuel. That's not much, although any terrorists out there might note that it's enough for a reasonable sized conventional bomb (the 2001 Ealing bomb contained 40kg of explosive, but wasn't fatal to people even standing five metres away).

Dirty bombs, anthrax and such things are far more frightening in newspapers than in reality. Any terrorist worth his salt knows that releasing a lot of energy in a short space of time is the best way to get noticed.

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

So Pilot say 80kg - Fuel 40Kg payload at most 280kg

Re: Unidentified plane violates no fly zone
 

American pilot - 160kg :P

What sort of volume is 280kg of explosive? Cessnas aren't that roomy inside.

[I do hope MI5 aren't reading the next set of Google searches I'm about to do]

C-4 plastic explosive - 1.60 g/cc

1 cc is a cube 1cm on each side. 1000cm on each side is a cubic metre or 100x100x100 cc=10^6 cc

So 1m^3 of C-4 weighs 1 600 000 grams or 1 600 kg or 1.6 tonnes. This would be

a) Quite expensive (£24,00 0 or so)
b) Devastating
c) Heavier than the entire aircraft

200kg would be 1/8 of a cubic metre of C-4, or a cube 50cm on each side. That would fit in a Cessna, I think, and it would have a chance of getting into the air.

200kg is officially (for quarrying/demolition) unsafe up to 500m away - not that it will kill you, but 500m is a safe distance for the hoi polloi to stand at.

200kg will blow a hole through seven feet of reinforced concrete, roughly, if placed directly in contact. Obviously it's hard to park a Cessna close enough to the building to get the full effect.

So in the worst case scenario a Cessna with as much high-grade explosive as it can carry having a really lucky hit would probably knock a hole in the wall of the White House or Capitol and make life rather unpleasant within 100-200 metres. So getting down into the bunkers seems quite a sensible precaution.

I'm not going to post any links. I can hear helicopters coming!