The Legend of Korra

I don't think it is hard to imagine that planes need some sort of runway to take off of. These people aren't stupid and considering Iroh is a General of an army, I feel like he is trained to evaluate situations. As for the device Sato made that was a defense against other planes, I did find that very bizarre. You would've thought that the Equalists would be cocky enough with all their security and power that they wouldn't need a backup system like that to take down a high jacked plane, but whatever.

The thing that was shot out was the same "technology" the Chi blockers use to capture people. If anything, that was intended to be used to disable soldiers. But Sato having designed it knew it was there and used it to take out a plane instead.