Crisis Management - White House style

0:07 secs
Secretary General: "What are our airborne scenarios?"

Air Force General: "There are no airborne scenarios."

Secretary General: "Well we better start generating them, haven't we General? And they better be damn good and they better work."

***

0:24 secs
Vice President of the United States: "Somebody better notify our allies. We'll need secure airspace, can we keep that under wraps?"


"If you could just try and relax Catherine, I'm in charge here."

***

I turned on the TV while writing a speech for oral presentation class when I saw Air Force One on the Movie Channel. I loved movies like this where the action was exaggerated and there was a clear good guy and bad bad guy - it didn't get better than this.

I wasn't paying much attention to the movie until this scene came on (0:07) and after hearing the Secretary of Defense mentioning "airborne scenarios" I was instantly interested.

I wondered if the White House really did have a contingency plan if and when Air Force One got into this kind of situation. I'm sure the answer would be yes.

It was interesting to see the staff plan and prepare as the event unfolded, but I was thinking if even that would happen in real life. I guessed it could since they would be able to assemble everyone if the President of the United States was in danger.

In the scene starting on 0:24, the Vice President of the United States asked one of the staff if he could get secured airspace for Air Force One. Note that she mentioned if he could keep the request under wraps as to not alert the media that there was an airborne situation unfolding 30,000 feet in the air that involved the President of the United States, his family and staff, and a group of very angry Russian terrorists. That staff member had the very important task of making sure the media didn't find out. But, imagine if the media did find out. What then? Back to the drawing board for the Secretary of Defense.

I liked how the Secretary of Defense put on his PR hat and said to the Vice President of the United States to stay calm as he was in control of the situation. In real life, I'm sure he wouldn't have said that. I mean, how could he? How could he reassure that things were going to be okay when the Vice President was in the same room and she, too, could see that negotiations weren't working. If I were the Secretary of Defense, I'd keep my mouth shut until I was certain things were going to work in my favour.

The phone call scene at 5:38 to 8:38 described what a real situation room was though...

Everyone was huddled around the phone and once the terrorist hung up, everyone broke out of the room, each of them having a task to perform. I liked the part where one staff member yelled "We'll need some language experts." He was ready to do some research on angry Russian dialects.