Overuse of Fighter Jets on Commercial Intercepts

[hiss srq]

Every day it seems like we read about at least one more time we piss more tax payer money away because Jimmy John grabbed his nuts in flight the wrong way on a commercial flight. Honestly it is kind of starting to feel a bit knee jerkish. What real purpose does a pair of F-15 Eagles serve off the wing because some guy pees on the L1 door? Realisticly do you think we will ever actually take a US flagged commercial jet or turboprop out of the sky using the heats? I don't. It does more to scare the rest of the passengers than the guy 3/4's in the bag sleeping against the galley door with his pants around his ankles. Once you touch the cockpit door, okay..... burners on and intercept but it seems like either A.) Flight attendants don't do the other half of their job anymore. The other half being dealing with people etc... or B.) The US gov. is putting on a dog and pony show for the media with relation to our "seriousness" about national security. I am not saying that safety of air travel is not important, it is very important but I think we are still going about it the wrong way. We have FAM's on many flights, we have FFDO's on lots of other flights and most passenger's are going to pound on you if the F/A's can't take the person you themselves. At the same time it seems like F/A's are NOT trying to interdict so much as call the flight deck and report in while the revenue takes care of business lately. Do they need more self defense training? I know they need more pay but it is their job to deal with this. It costs taxpayer and airlines money everytime we scamble a fighter jet pair and send a plane to the nearest suitable because Billy Bob had one too many Jack and Cokes in the terminal and started grabbing his crotch in the isle singing his renendition of "Its not unusual" by Tom Jones to the flight attendant. Opinions?

[PhilDernerJr]

There are a couple advantages to this:

1) Good training for scrambling

2) Escorting in in the very off-chance that something DOES happen, the fighters are used to dealing with airliners

3) Even if we don't shoot them down, we can nudge a plane off-course and or something, as has happened with errant planes in the past

4) Pax knowing that even relatively "minor" offenses may cause a scramble might make them less likely to act like idiots.

I agree it often seems silly and wasteful, but our fighters are going to fly anyway and it's good to have them DO something.

[Nick]

They have to fly anyways, it's their job.