Qatar Airlines escorted to Manchester Airport

RAF jet been scrambled to escort the plane due to a 'device onboard'- i always wonder about the purpose of this , would the uk government really order the jet to blow up a passenger plane in this case?

If it looked like being taken out of the control of the pilots and heading towards a population centre for a 9/11-type attack, then yes, that's the intention of it.

it would be difficult to acertain for sure if a plane was not in control of pilots, if it was heading toward a city airport. i wonder if its jsut posturing, it would be a massive decsion to shoot a plane full of people out of the sky, or even at what point they would do so

We don't really have any airports right in the middle of cities though, aside from London City. And there are ways of working out who's there in the cockpit. Among them is to have a look, hence why the planes go up. As a deterrence plan it works pretty well.

i dont think nutcase terrorist will care if he gets blown up in the air or crashing to the ground, he may only be upset that he didnt kill more people, but he still makes his 'statement in his head'. so i doubt it is a major deterrent

So we should just allow them to carry on and kill potentially thousands by smashing into a city? No, we should have some form of plan ready, this is it.

It also is likely to deter the more impressionable out there.

to me it seems like a pointless excersise, jsut posturing. id highly doubt any western government would have the nuts to order a jet strike on a passenger airline regardless

You got a better idea?

Nope, apart from pressing for more stringent security in middle eastern and terrorist hotspot airports, or getting tough on those countries diplomatically to do so. but it will never fully solve the problem . Im just pointing out the reality. it was all the more stupid in this case seeing it was a confirmed 'bomb' threat' hence what is a jet going to do about this??

And how do they know at the time it was only a hoax threat? Have to treat it seriously until such time that it's known not to be serious, which was after the jet was scrambled.

the pilot called in a bomb threat, thats why they scrambled a jet, that it was a hoax wasnt my point, if it was an on-plane bomb , what would a fighter jet do?