How credible is the story of a jet taking evasive action against a rocket
Which the pilot saw ?
Clearly it is highly undesirable that a civil aircraft would stray into a military danger zone or that such an Egyptian zone would be promulgated near a busy international airport and even worse that the aircraft would be in the proximity of a missile launch, let alone a ground to air missile, as seems to be the case in the near miss being reported with the Thompson aircraft. One suspects that the missile, if it was an anti aicraft missile, did not lock on to the Thompson jet and what evasion action that was taken was simply to scarper and get out of the area.
Still even light aircraft have been known to outmanouevre surface to air missiles, even if only in the short term. During the Angolan bush war a SAAF Bobok (observation aircraft) was shot down during operation Moduler by a SA-8 missile but had previously taken violent evasive action twice before to avoid two other missiles. A bad situation and third time unlucky for the plucky crew of the light aircraft but a damned good show to avoid being knocked down twice before by a relatively sophisticated SAM!
The fact is that tourists and western governments have been in denial about the dangers of terrorism in sharm el sheikh for many years. A work colleague of mine was killed in a bomb blast there in 2004 and there have been many other examples of the typically lax and incompetent Egyptian security resulting in successful terrorist atrocities and Egyptian military mistakes resulting in tourist deaths (vide the Mexican tourist massacre in the Western desert this year).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34241680Aermacchi AM.3 (Bosbok)
Caco
