The highjacked aircraft hoax that alerted Delta Force

I decided to create this cartoon after a real-world call-in regarding a supposed highjacked American airliner. In the end, it was all caused by a symphony of errors and miscommunications stemming from the airport’s Air Traffic Control (ATC).

The drawing was very welcome, as there was quite the sour taste among the assault force since the apparent prank call brought them all racing to work at the wee hours for nothing!

As (bad) luck would have it, the evening before the call, in response to the highjacking, there was a squadron get-together to socialize and share a few adult beverages. This we did in honor of the Unit brothers who had passed away while in service to the nation. That made it all the more painful to be woken up at 0330hrs to respond immediately to to a real-world Unit alert.

At that time I felt the beers for sure, but I was remarkably in control of all of my faculties. By my observation, none of the other men showed signs of being still intoxicated from the gathering, either. Still, it made the grapes that much more sour when the whole thing turned out to be a huge mistake; just a travesty of multiple errors in communication.

(Cartoon courtesy of author)

The origin of the false report was the city of Amsterdam in Netherlands.

The first major blunder was by the crew of the airliner, who neglected to raise the aircraft’s flaps back up to their stowed position after the landing. Flaps down on the ground like that is an international sign of duress among the world aviation industry.

Were that along not enough, the crew aboard made what they deemed to be a clever funny response to ATC when queried about their flaps-down distress signal.

Regardless of who did what to whom, the situation rapidly became blown out of proportion, making its way eventually to the American National Command Authority (NCA) which resulted in the notification of the Tier-1 national asset – the Delta Force – to report and begin planning for a possible highjacking situation.

In a span of under two hours the situation had been downgraded to a complete hoax, and everyone was release to go home for some sleep, only to report back to work at noon for a compressed work day. That was fine with everybody; nobody complained.

For the duration of my tenure there with the Delta Force, I never heard any added details explaining the whole affair; it was as if everyone involved wanted to just drive on and forget all about it.

And yet it happened!

By Almighty God and with Honor,

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Feature Image: Delta Force members during counter-highjacking training. (Photo courtesy of author)

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