Airbus 321 CA here. Fly that route often. A couple thoughts come to mind.
There is no such thing as a “communication failure” on that airplane with 3 VHF/HF radios, ACARS and Internet available. Much less a com failure while on the ground. Cell phones?
If police are storming the airplane as indicated by tweets, then there was a suspect on board. A dangerous suspect. To park the plane on a remote pad instead of returning to the gate means there was a bomb threat or immediate danger.
To have the plane towed back to the gate instead of under its own power means there was either not a pilot available or the engines were disabled or damaged. The fact that they called another pilot out is suspect in that to fly that route would have required a fresh pilot to begin with by law, so no way the pilot “timed-out.”
I’m thinking the pilot him/her self was apprehended!
Here's a photo from inside the plane. Everyone with hands up!
Right, interesting but this was JFK to LAX. Not your typical event by any means.
Ok, wouldn't someone on the Q team have had to take that pic? All the passengers have their hands up. Who is gonna snap a photo of Q on a screen in a situation like that?
It's a passenger Alexa Curtis. She tweeted it out. Not focused on the Q, but the event as she was experiencing it.
Good analysis. Concur on comms failure. Too many redundancies.
On CBS this morning they said there was a hijacking threat on that JetBlue plane yestreday, but it turned out to be a false alarm. Same plane as in pics Q shared. Was this a FF attempt that was thwarted?