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Fake bomb on Air France plane looked like clock

Fake bomb on Air France plane looked like clock

Thought experiment: If Ahmed’s “clock” were found on the plane, what would pilots have done?

An Air France flight was diverted to an emergency landing after a bomb-like device was found in a bathroom. It was a fake, made of cardboard with a crude timer on it, as would have been obvious to anyone handling it.

But the pilots took no chances.

CBS News reports:

Kenyan authorities are questioning several suspects who were on an Air France flight from Mauritius to Paris that was forced to land early Sunday in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa after a device suspected to be a bomb was found in a lavatory.

The CEO of Air France said hours after the plane had been grounded that the device discovered in the bathroom was a fake bomb.

The Boeing 777 was heading to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris from Mauritius when its pilots requested an emergency landing at early Sunday in the Kenyan city of Mombasa.

Frederic Gagey, the head of the airline, said the device was made of cardboard, paper and a household timer, and had been found in a little cupboard that is behind a mirror.

Here are images being widely reported as the fake bomb [See also Featured Image]:

Air France Fake Bomb on Grass

Heres the close up of the timing mechanism:

Air France Fake Bomb clock mechanism

Unlike Ahmed’s clock in Texas, this device did appear to have some sort of fake explosive attached to it.

Ahmed Mohammad Clock

Thought experiment: If Ahmed’s “clock” were found on the plane, what do you suppose the pilots would have done? Wait to find out?

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Thought experiment: If Ahmed’s “clock” were found on the plane, what would pilots have done?
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Exactly what they should do, and did do.

Which goes to show that an Air France pilot has considerably better judgment than the President of the United States. “Unexpectedly.”

— which should come as no surprise to anyone —

Oh, how nice! There was some young, enterprising, future STEM student and inventor on the plane.

They should’ve flown the plane straight to the White House.

The part that I find interesting is that someone actually made it onto a flight with something that looked so much like a bomb.

“as would have been obvious to anyone handling it.”

Not something I would generally recommend, as a former Army EOD. The first thing that struck me it that it looks like it contains TNT, from the shape of the mock explosives. The first clue that is may be a fake device to me is that there is only one wire running from the box on the top. Electrically fired detonators take 2 wires to work, as a general rule. (Granted my knowledge is 20 years old.)

    Ragspierre in reply to Gremlin1974. | December 20, 2015 at 3:37 pm

    Most of the commercial and low-explosive military explosives I’ve handled were packaged just that way, whether in blocks or sticks.

    I would not have bet my life, or the lives of my passengers, that the second wire was not routed under the timer and hidden.

      Gremlin1974 in reply to Ragspierre. | December 20, 2015 at 4:09 pm

      Oh, and I wasn’t suggesting that they should. In fact they should not touch it and I would have been very nervous during the landing, because mercury switches are a bi**h. They did exactly the right thing.

    I heard an expert comment that it could have been a practice run done by a team- say 3 people who would each bring in pieces of the “bomb” then hide the pieces and assemble it in the rest room.

Clearly it wasn’t a bomb. There was no battery back-up on the devise like Ahmed’s.

Wait. What?

    Gremlin1974 in reply to Redneck Law. | December 20, 2015 at 4:13 pm

    Yea, well there is plenty of room in that box on top for a couple of lithium ion batteries, a switch, and some wires and you would never see them.

    So maybe they were just more creative than Ahmed, lol.

    Oh but he is a genius I forgot. /sarc off

If you criticize whoever planted that hoax-bomb, you are a racist.

Can’t wait to watch Obama praise and embrace the bomber in the Rose Garden.

I also would like to offer my unsolicited opinion that someone who would do something like this should face the same consequences they would if the bomb was real.

Actually, if I am completely honest I think someone who would do something like this should be shot out of hand and left for the scavengers, but the first will do.

Wonder when this enterprising individual is going to get his invite from Obama…

This was a successful terrorist attack … It caused fear, disrupted a flight with over 400 passengers, made big news, and increased the public’s fear of flying. And each time a fake terror attack occurs that turns out fake, it makes it easier to pull off the next time. Too bad it appears that those who did this will still be free to do it again, either for real or fake. Both are effective.

    Twanger in reply to lawdoc. | December 23, 2015 at 7:04 pm

    100% agree lawdoc.
    It was terrorism. No doubt about it.
    The asymmetrical cost ratio was enormous.

    Huge number of people inconvenienced, with a cost of many thousands of dollars, for perhaps a device cost of $20.

    Plus the legal risk associated with planting it was very low, and nobody had to sacrifice themselves.

    But hey, never mind, Islam is our friend now, as decreed by Hussein.

This post is nothing but a pathetic attempt to retroactively justify the hateful, bigoted, evil false arrest, kidnapping, and false imprisonment of a religious minority American high school student. Your hateful bigoted smug emissions mean you should all be imprisoned – you would deny rights to others, so shall your rights be denied.

The difference is that in this case there was good reason to suspect the device of being a bomb. In Ahmed’s case there was no such reason.

For that matter, anything that is found in an airliner’s bathroom, and that doesn’t look like something a passenger is likely to have innocently forgotten there, should raise suspicion, no matter what it looks like. But in a school that level of paranoia is inappropriate (though all too common). Neither pencil cases nor electronics on their own justify suspicion, and nor does their combination.