Would any of you have ever got on a plane if you knew it would be flying over a war zone????

Suppose the syrians and those battling in Iraq etc just say `yes, leave that one alone, its the 1.58pm from paris to Dubai'.

Reformed Leopard.

You drunk Zazu?

I have flown over the likes of Birmingham and Middlesborough - the shhi%%isht of sh***th^^es. But the awful people who populate those cities are not going to try and blow up my airplane!

I got a flight back from Cyprus about 10 years ago piloted by Bruce Dickinson, the same flight the week after crashed and burned. I think the airline was Helios.

never been on a plane and dont really want to. all those airport type disaster movies put me off as a kid.

i thought i was unusual, but i read an article that said 1 in 4 britons have never flown anywhere. i probably will do one day, travelling is something i dont really want to do until im so old im that bored with being alive i dont care if the plane crashes or not! so probably next year

You have more chance of crashing through an aeroplane fault.

The odds of splashing down in the Altantic on the way to New York are shorter than the odds of getting shot down by a missile over land.

The direct route from Amsterdam is over Ukraine air space.

These planes use an awful lot of fuel, and taking a detour south of the  Ukriane is estimated to cost a further £4,000, per trip.

Malaysia airlines have been losing money, and they're not going to make it worse by adding more flight time with detours, as well as an extra £4,000 on the fuel bill.

That was so they could respond in time to a light aircraft being flown into the stadium, wasn't it?

Done it loads of times, long haul flights typically fly over Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan.

It was crazy for so many reasons!
Firstly it can't have been a brilliant idea to tell the world about it.

Then to admit that they were no use in bad visibility.

Then to declare that they had to seek permission from some ultimate authority before deploying,
by which time it would have been far too late.

I saw the battery (of Patriot missiles) on top of Greenwich Park....it didn't look very serious....we must have something better hidden from view.

Allow me take you back down Memory Lane to show how stupid our government forces are.

This was in the late 1980s.

Jean Michel Jarre gave 2 concerts in the docks, in our favourite London Borough, Newham.

The building used for his laser light show was the old Co-operative Wholesale Society (C.W.S.) building. It's called Millennium Mills these days. 

It's white, and it's a huge building. 

I lived on the top floor of a tower block about half a mile away from the docks.

On the night of concert 1, I invited mates and families round. I got 4 loudspeakers up on the roof and got the concert on the radio. There was plenty of food and drink available, and we enjoyed the free laser show.

Looking around, we saw that most other tower blocks near the docks had the same thing going on. The best view was from the block to our right and just behind us. We were only 14 floors high and that block was 22 floors high.

At the end of the night, all the stuff was put away and there were no problems.

The next night, Saturday, was concert 2.

We had been out all morning, but soon phoned round with more invitations for a repeat of the previous night if anybody was interested. They were. Me and two mates set up the chairs and tables etc, on the roof.

People turned up well in advance of the concert starting.

About an hour before it was due to begin, there was a minor commotion outside the front door.  To cut a longer story short, it was what we thought were plain clothes police, but we knew that none of them were from Plaistow nick.

They started ordering everybody off the roof of the block. Me and the bloke next door said we were residents, all these people were guests, and entitled to be up here. They disagreed.   After a while it was ultimatum time, and pulling back their coats, showed us that they were armed. 'Off the roof or get nicked.'

I asked 'On what facking charge?' but Mrs CMAT told me to leave it and go inside.

She's the boss

Looking out of the windows we saw similar scenes on other blocks.

The reason for this was that Princess Diana was at the concert that night.

Nobody had a missile launcher on the roof, and even from the top of the 22 storey block, you couldn't see one person in the show or the audience, so a sniper would have been out of luck as well.

I'd say that 4 officers to each block all over the Borough was a complete waste of resources.

Anybody bringimg in a missile launcher would have bem spotted, and it would have been nicked off them, and sold or used elsewhere.     

Our mate Andrew is half-pakistani, and we spent the next fortnight blaming him for it, as he was clearly a 'dodgy looking' facker.