Article

2009-12-12 Southeast Asia

Thailand detains plane with weapons cache from North Korea

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Posted by tipper 2009-12-12 08:50|| || Front Page|| [9 views ] Top
File under: Commies

#1 some spy earned their pay with that catch

Posted by Frank G 2009-12-12 11:33|| 2009-12-12 11:33|| Front Page Top

#2 Any idea where the plane was going?

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-12-12 05:56|| 2009-12-12 05:56|| Front Page Top

#3 Not so much interested in where it was going as to why it took off without enough fuel to get to its destination. The pilot requested emergency refueling in Bangkok.

That airport is 2300 nautical miles from Pyongyang. Maximum range of an Il-76 is 1970 nautical miles with full payload. 40 tons of arms is about half payload. So this looks like either a "planned emergency" or they couldn't make it to their planned refuel stop. Speculation is the destination of the plane was Sri Lanka or Pakistan. The plane would not have been able to make it non-stop to either destination from Pyongyang. So they either had a refueling planned for somewhere else and couldn't make it for some reason, they planned all along to have an "emergency" in Bangkok, they were shorted on their fuel load in Pyongyang, or the pilot intentionally dumped some fuel to create an emergency.

My guess is they planned all along to have an "emergency". Rather than file required paperwork and plan for a stop in Bangkok and possibly have to answer inconvenient questions about the nature of their flight, they might have decided to have an "emergency" refueling making a bet the airport there would simply top them off and allow them on their way without asking a lot of questions.

Nice work in any case.

Posted by crosspatch 2009-12-12 07:36|| 2009-12-12 07:36|| Front Page Top

#4 "they might have decided to have an "emergency" refueling making a bet the airport there would simply top them off and allow them on their way without asking a lot of questions"

Oops. :-D

Posted by Barbara Skolaut 2009-12-12 10:06|| 2009-12-12 10:06|| Front Page Top

#5 Crosspatch - very thoughtful, but why not Burma? I thought the Nkors were in cahoots in some ways with Burma, and certainly the burmese are more approachable?

Also, why Sri Lanka has the destination? Are they still under embargo, and having own their war couldn't they simply wait a bit for resupply - OR, would this have been a LTTE order?

Good to see the embassy is out of the loop for now.

Posted by Halliburton - Mysterious Conspiracy Division 2009-12-12 11:13|| 2009-12-12 11:13|| Front Page Top

11:13 Halliburton - Mysterious Conspiracy Division
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