![]() Some airports have expanded their boundary patrolling areas. Recently the Transportation Security Administration began surveying major airports to assess the risk at each. (One passenger’s report of a small explosion near the wing suggests that the 757 may have dispensed flares as decoys.) Arkia, the Federal Aviation Administration, other airlines, and aircraft manufacturers don’t encourage discussion of current or planned safeguards against shoulder-fired man-portable air defense systems (manpads) like the SA series and the U.S.-made Stinger.Ĭongress recently began working on legislation to explore the best anti-missile measures and equip the U.S. But there may have been other factors at work that affected the two missiles.Ī few secretive Arkia, U.S., and Israeli officials know whether the airliner carried infrared countermeasures. It’s possible that the two heat-seekers may have locked on to a glint of sunlight or a wing’s edge that was too thin to hit, and there’s a good chance that their decades-old batteries were nearly dead. One theory is that poorly trained gunmen fired the shoulder-launched missiles from the wrong distance or at the wrong angle. The relieved passengers broke into celebration, but the press began to wonder how two SAMs could miss such a large, slow target. ![]() Only when the flight was minutes from Tel Aviv were the passengers informed that terrorists had fired on the aircraft from an area around Moi International Airport. Passengers hardly noticed the bump, but as the cockpit crew watched the white contrails arc away, they instantly grasped the situation.įor five hours the crew said nothing. ON NOVEMBER 28, 2002, JUST MOMENTS AFTER TAKEOFF FROM MOMBASA, KENYA, Israeli vacationers felt their chartered Arkia Airlines Boeing 757 shudder as it flew through the wakes of two Soviet-designed SA-7 missiles that were meant to bring it down.
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