Suggestions

Anything. Any ideas you have, click on the red edit button at the top left and jot them down.

Some ideas about the suggested plot:

I think the motive will require some explanation. Why would anyone be prepared to do something like that?

Finding a motive for Abe should not be too difficult - father, mother, wife, brother, daughter, son killed by a bomb in the Gulf war, bomb attack in Jerusalem, Nairobi or Bali (or something like that) and a fanatical reason-defying projection of his hate onto muslims. Characterisation: perhaps Abe is a quiet, affable man who is considered friendly and responsible by his colleagues, the kind of person who inspires confindence at the controls of a plane.

Is it a Maverick strike? Probably, perhaps with some very unofficial inside help from some US, Israeli government department, Pentagon, etc. (but best to keep them out of it as that would require a lot of research) from a Dr Strangelove type figure. I think the lone strike is a better idea as governments don't like upsetting the status quo when things are in their favour.

Is there any psychological screening on passenger plane pilots? Would a US pilot(is he American?) be flying into Saudi Arabia. He could have diverted a flight to another destination from somewhere else. Who would be on the plane? European tourists on their way to Greece, Turkey, the Seychelles, etc? Apart from passenger planes there are also cargo planes and planes tha move military personnel around all over the world. It could be a NATO cargo plane on its way to Yugoslavia or Afghanistan.

Mecca is relatively far west and if the plane came down from high on an international flight path, the city could perhaps be reached before Saudi fighter planes could shoot the plane down.

How great would the world reaction be? If the Iraq has been occupied by the US for two years and movements fighting the army of occupation is a random and weak terrorist organisation (there's no official international anti-US support) than would an attack on Mecca cause a third world war?

Question: what time frame is this set in? Pre-9/11 or post-9/11? I think the reactions from the world in general and the Muslim world in particular would be very different.