3 ms·

I don't know anything about planes, but my hunch is that sabotaging an airplane, especially a private one, is easier than you're making it sound.

• anigbrowl 17y ago
  Your hunch is largely mistaken. Of course it can be done. But methods like a bomb or remote trigger are apt to leave forensic evidence, and sabotage qua damage to the plane is likely to be found either during pre-flight checks and/or a pilot reporting a problem tower before the crash occurs. Unless an air crash takes place at sea or a very remote location, the chance of sabotage going undetected within the USA is low. All plane crashes in this country are subjected to detailed forensic examination by the NTSB.
  • sokoloff 17y ago
    For GA, the NTSB pretty much only responds to fatal crashes, and even there if the cause is "routine" (controlled flight into terrain, spatial disorientation loss of control) there won't be much in the way of a detailed investigation. Have a non-fatal accident and you as pilot-in-command are required to report it within 72 hours, but no one from the NTSB is likely to ever see the aircraft in question in person. Commercial Part 121 crashes get large amounts of attention and amazing levels of effort (the reconstruction of TWA800 is astonishing to me). If I bend my 182 and don't kill anyone, they'll only know about it because I have to tell them and they'll file my submission away.
• noonespecial 17y ago
  To call an NTSB post crash investigation rigorous is still a gross understatement. They will piece every little twisted bit of tin back together to find out what happened. Sabotaging a plane is easy, sabotaging a plane and leaving no trace is almost impossible.