Why has BA223 not been cancelled ?
Will the security bureaucracies prove to be as inefficient as they were earlier in the month, leading to transatlantic British Airways or Air France passengers suffering hours of "security" delays and "passenger profiling or blacklisting" ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3446763.stm
"UK and French flights 'targets'
New intelligence shows British Airways and Air France flights to the US could be terrorist targets, say US officials.
The intelligence is said to specifically mention BA flight 223"
"The BBC's Michael Buchanan in Washington said US intelligence agencies reported receiving a "specific and credible threat" in the last couple of days.
It is feared al-Qaeda may be attempting to hijack a plane from either London or Paris and fly it into a target in the United States, added our correspondent."
Note that this is not a claim about a bomb or a missile threat but about a suicide hijack threat. Presumably, given the fuss about the Hutton enquiry and BBC news reporting, this report has been corroborated by the BBC.
A "specific and credible threat" to flight BA223 should imply, according to the leaks about the secret UK Sky Marshal policy, that this flight should be cancelled.
This 15:05 scheduled flight was not cancelled on Friday 31st January - it took off at 15.38, within the usual air traffic control congestion delays at Heathrow.
Does this mean that BA223 passengers and crew were already being used as bait in order to entrap terrorist hijackers by placing armed Sky Marshals aboaard ?
Will the passengers, crew and the people on the ground be put at risk by military fighter jet escorts prepared to shoot this flight down ?
Why do the US authorities assume that terrorists who somehow manage to evade the security checks at Heathrow and smuggle weapons on board, and hijack a flight, would wait until the the aeroplane has used up most of its load of jet fuel and attack a US city ? It was the tons of jet fuel on board relatively small airliners which helped to cause so much damage to the World Trade Center and to the Pentagon. Why would suicide terrorists forgo the opportunity to use a much bigger Boeing 747 Jumbo jet against London or Paris ?
The state of US insecurity is illustrated by the incident this month involving a Sudanese man who managed to fly with live ammunition in his pocket from Washington Dulles airport which was only detected once he got to London Heathrow.
Check the Heathrow Flight Departures to see if BA223 is delayed or cancelled.
Check the real time progress of the flight BA223 to see if it makes it over the Atlantic without being hijacked.