Heavy metal in the pattern: SFO goes live, and one of them is worth dying for 275a571

San Francisco International is open for business. Around the clock and in every weather, the heavies now work the bay: ALLIED 747-400s, LIBERTY 737s, CASCADE MD-90s and PACIFIC EMPRESS DC-10s, climbing out and letting down on the corridors real traffic flies into SFO. They squawk on the radar with airline callsigns, they hold their routes like professionals, and they will absolutely ruin your merge if you cut across final at the wrong moment.

The Hornet’s fire-control computer doesn’t care what you lock — an airliner tracks, designates and takes a missile like anything else. The Navy cares. Splash a civilian and the sortie doesn’t end with a score line, it ends with a COURT MARTIAL. Fly the intercept, make the visual ID, and keep your finger off the pickle.

Which brings us to MISSION 7: one of those Pacific Empress DC-10s is carrying a defector the other side very much wants back, and bandits will vector in to make sure he never talks. Get to him, see off the welcoming committee, and put him safely on the ground. And because a sky this busy shouldn’t keep moving while you’re reading the menu, the whole bay now freezes when you hit Q — traffic, bandits, carrier and all — and picks up exactly where you left it.