False Hijacking Alert

By now, everybody and their dog must have heard about the false hijacking alert on a Virgin Atlantic A340 recently. I was working the day this guy came in to Halifax. It was a bizarre situation, and we knew something was odd before they isolated what the problem was. It's not often that a airline gets involved in where to divert a hijacked airplane. If the pilot is choosing an alternate destination, it's not normally someplace like a small Canadian city.

Since everybody knows the details that I write here, I don't feel like I'm speaking out against the rules of the company I work for. Heck, people in CNN knew about the "hijacking" early enough to report the original destination, my hometown of Moncton. The idea of coming here didn't last long, and instead they diverted to Halifax. News travels fast these days. The thing that really disappointed me in all of this, now that the outcome was little more than an inconvenience, is the callsign our military fighters used. AGLET1 and 2. Aglet. Do you know what they are? They were called "flooglebinders" in the movie Rainman, I think it was. The little plastic things on the ends of shoelaces that prevent them from fraying. Come on, why couldn't we see something a little more manly? Or at least, meaningful...