Quote:Many readers might by now be indignant; convinced this is incorrect or misleading information because of "those telephone calls from the hijacked aircraft".  Which telephone calls exactly? There are no records of any such calls, and the emotional claptrap the media fed you in the aftermath of the attack was in all cases third-person.  We had the media's invisible "contact" at an airline who "said" a hostess called to report a hijacking, and we had a priest (?) who "said" he received a call from a man asking him in turn to call his wife and tell her he loved her.  Presumably this man would have had his wife's name filed in his cellphone, and faced with imminent death would have called her direct.  The FAA helped out by claiming that it had "overheard" a heated argument from a cockpit where the radio transmit switch had been left in the "on" position.  When push came to shove, the FAA was forced to retract, and admit that the mythical argument was not on the tapes at all.

Whether more information will be forthcoming about Home Run is unknown, but nowadays there  are large numbers of people apart from the author privy to the basic data.  As long ago as the early nineties, a major European flag carrier [Lufthansa] acquired the information and was seriously alarmed that one of its own aircraft might be "rescued" by the Americans without its authority.  Accordingly, this flag carrier completely stripped the American flight control computers out of its entire fleet, and replaced them with a home grown version.  These aircraft are now effectively impregnable to penetration by Home Run , but that is more than can be said for the American aircraft fleet.  A casual count indicates around  600 aircraft in the USA and elsewhere are still vulnerable and could be used in further attacks at any time,  which might help explain why America has lately been bombing the Afghans primarily with bags of wheat.  For the first time in US history, American officials appear to be genuinely fearful of future reprisals, and justifiably so with 600 giant bombs parked on the wrong side of their missile defence shield.

Quote:It is a "Catch 22" situation.  In order to make all of the aircraft safe, the flight control systems would have to be stripped out and replaced, at a cost of billions of dollars the airlines cannot afford because they are going broke.  Nor is there enough time.  The most innovative anti-hijacking tool in the American arsenal, has now become the biggest known threat to American national security.

For the purpose of public reassurance I would like to publish a complete list of aircraft which cannot be affected by Home Run, but I cannot do so for legal reasons.  Any aircraft manufacturer not on the list might feel inclined to sue me for defamation and I can't afford that.  However, there is nothing to stop me publishing my personal choice of aircraft for a flight from, say, Atlanta to Singapore via JFK, Frankfurt, and Kuala Lumpur.

  From Atlanta to JFK I would probably travel on a Boeing 737, and connect with a Boeing 777 for the onward flight to Frankfurt.  At Frankfurt I would probably board an Airbus A340 for Kuala Lumpur, and finish the journey to Singapore on a DC9 or a Fokker 100.  Naturally I might be unlucky enough to pick an aircraft with an intoxicated pilot, or an unrelated mechanical problem, but apart from those minor risks I'd feel pretty safe