In the pre-9/11 world I don't find it surprising that the FAA did not contact NORAD for 15 minutes just because they lost contact with the aircraft and SUSPECTED a possible hijacking.

One thing is clear, on that morning everyone thought that the only role NORAD would play IF it was a hijacking would be to simply track the plane to its destination, this does not sound like a high priority call when they know where the airplane is as they have it on radar.

No one would have even entertained a thought that we would be scrambling jets trying to shoot other planes down.

You have to put yourself in the frame of mind of the people that morning prior to any attacks.

You have to realise that it actually took the second crash into the WTC for the realization to sink in that the first crash was deliberate. It was the second crash which changed everything.

Arthur

Arthur and David,
I tried doing some quick research on Nexis (although, sadly, I do have some real work to do today!) to answer that very same question, and haven't been able to get a good answer so far. I know in the Payne Stewart case it took a while to get military intervention but of course that was a private jet. Thankfully, before Sept. 11 we hadn't had any major domestic hijacking for some time.
Although it's easy to be a "Monday morning QB" after 9/11, I still find it hard to believe that NORAD wouldn't be alerted fairly early on -- like within the first 5 minutes or so -- of "a possible hijacking." Although I beleive, as you do, that few Americans suspected a hijacked jet would be crashed into a national landmark, an F-16 could at least establish visual contact with cockpit, try to prevent the plane from leaving American airspace, etc. No?

what did you spect from a country who keeps Gen. Myers commanding the military Staff.

What do you mean by "a less enlightened country"?, please.

I have just read military planes cannot shot civil planes following a law passed by the US Senate in 1973, even in case of air hijacking. What do you know about this?

The reason the intercept of Payne Stewart's Lear was so quick was b ecause airborne fighters in the area were simply diverted to his location. The initial interception was from two A-10s departing out of Eglin AFB FL. They, however, were beaten to the scene (no suprise) by F-16s on AD alert at Tyndall AFB. The Tyndall F-16s escorted Stewart's Lear until F-16s from the Oklahoma and North Dakota ANG units could take over.

MD

[QUOTE]Originally posted by MikeD:
[B]The reason the intercept of Payne Stewart's Lear was so quick was b ecause airborne fighters in the area were simply diverted to his location--------------------------------------

Which begs the question how many fighers were up on 911? You don't hear the question asked nor the figures revealed. It was CAVU on the East coast that day.

Jack

I think people who've read any of my posts on this board or the flight93crash.com board know that while I'm still an "agnostic" about a Flight 93 shootdown, I've never bought into any of the wackier theories, about Global Hawk or "no plane at the Pentagon" or Bush planned 9/11 or even that he "let 9/11 happen." That said, I'm both baffled and troubled by the information that the FAA itself is now admitting about what happened on 9/11.
According to the FAA's own press conference yesterday, it admits that its controller realized at 8:25 a.m. that AA 11 was a "possible hijacking" and that it didn't contact NORAD "for 15 minutes." 15 MINUTES!!!! If you're at work right now, take your watch off, put it next to your screen, and see how many phone calls, emails, etc., you can make in 15 minutes. If you happen to be at home with a small kid, try watching 15 minutes of "Barney" or "Blue's Clues" and see what an excruciatingly long time that is. (Mine are at the "Spongebob" age, thank God).
I understand the hijacking wasn't confirmed, but couldn't somebody pick up the phone and give NORAD a heads up, so the guys could at least suit up and get out to the runway. What's more, it took NORAD another 12 minutes after the phone call to get airborne, which seems awfully slow to me -- thank God the Russians never tried a sneak attack. So we're talking a total of 27 minutes from the time FAA realized there might be a hijacking to the time that F-16s actually took off. In a less enlightened country, the FAA supervisor who twiddled his thumbs for 15 minutes, when the lives of 1,500 or so people in the second tower could have been saved, would have been tried for treason right now.
Here's the key section of the AP story, and a link to the story in its entirety:

"Air traffic controllers didn't notice anything odd Sept. 11 until communications fell silent with Flight 11's pilot 25 minutes after the plane took off at 8 a.m.

"We considered it at that time to be a possible hijacking," air traffic manager Glenn Michael said.

The FAA notified NORAD 15 minutes later; three minutes after that, NORAD was told United Airlines Flight 175 had been hijacked.

The first two military interceptors, Air Force F-15 Eagles from Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts, scrambled airborne at 8:52 a.m., too late to do anything about the second jet heading for the Trade Center or a third heading toward the Pentagon. http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/3853484.htm

Just another idle thought, which may not be entirely irrelevant. Don't you think after the Korean 747 and the Iran Air A300 incidents in 1983 and 1988 respectively, the authorities would find it even more difficult to get their minds round the need to shoot down civilian airliners ? This is quite apart from all the other command issues/response times I have also mentioned.

A question just for the sake of knowledge, which has not been answered: I have just read military planes cannot shot civil planes following a law passed by the US Senate in 1973, EVEN in case of air hijacking. Maybe that's the reason why the pilot is said to hesitate on shoting F93.

What do you know about this? I have tried to search the Senate web but...

[ August 14, 2002 11:07 AM: Message edited 2 times, lastly by JL ]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by MikeD:
[B] ***Not necessarily only the NORAD interceptors, but any fighters for that matter.

The point is that there's many more available aircraft on a daily basis performing normal training than just NORADs alert birds------------------------------

That's my main point. How many fighters were up on training missions and loaded with war shot on 911? The Guard unit at ADW had some F-16s returning with some cannon rounds on board around the first WTC hits.

My other point, Vipers and Eagles can go much faster than the reported 10 miles a minute they have used in the media, ROFL.

Jack

I guess when you are watching "Blues Clues" 15 minutes might seem along time. After all, your point of comparison is about 1 to 4 years of life.

But when you are responsible for the safety of around a thousand lives spread across dozens of aircraft traveling at high speeds in your airspace... 15 minutes doesn't seem to last that long. Start moving up the chain to get help on one particular aircraft, the responibility only increases in the number of lives beyond just the 100-200 on one flight out of a hundred. The first task is the safety of all aircraft, then you work out the process for handling a hijacking on US soil during a time of peace.

I'd imagine the first 15 minutes were spent calling other planes to steer them clear of a possible airborne threat and also assessing whether the "possible" hijacking was what it appeared to be, and how it might impact (which it is your primary job to prevent such impacts) other aircraft in the airspace. Then maybe someone can find the time to contact NORAD and provide a reasonable assessment of what is going on.

By the way, how long after the first plane hit the WTC did it take before the media was convinced that it was not accidental but was intentional?

Uh, not until the second one struck, of course. But the media didn't have access to the same info -- like a plane's transponder being shut off -- that the FAA, and, belatedly, NORAD, had.

Ah, so if a transponder goes inactive, the first action should be for the FAA to contact NORAD (that red phone, right beside every air traffic controller from GS-14 to SES-5?) and have the plane shot down, so that the sensibility of the news media's 20/20 hindsight would not be offended because someone was be prudent about taking actions that would effect the lives of hundreds of innocent people. After all, the FAA's failure here, lead to the deaths of order magnitude greater lost than that of a single airplane. They should be held accountable for that, shouldn't they? After all, who could have missed the telling blue paw print?

Certainly out of the question would be to take a few minutes trying to communicate with the plane to determine the failure mode of the transponder. After all checking facts to assure accuracy in reporting events to others would be inappropriate when emotions call for immediate actions. The crime becomes intolerable if moments are taken to warn other aircraft of a potential danger in the air around them, and to request verification that they are also not experiencing problems and can contact other controllers via another channel in order to offload work and allow proper dedication be provided to a developing situation. May they burn in hell for carrying out their duties and not cutting corners where it might have prevented the tragic lost of lives in a manner never before seen on the face of the Earth.

Thank you for you for providing enlightenment on the untaken possibilities... I'll so go in ponder this revelation.

Again, 15 minutes watching television may seem excruciating especially when you choose programming beneath your mental capacity. However, watching a small representation of the supposed reality of the airspace around you; provided by complex systems that nominally, but not always, operate properly; all the while using this knowledge with the rights and responsibility to take action for the well-being on dozens of aircraft and close to a thousand lives, seems to make relatively fleeting...

[QUOTE]Originally posted by adoucette:


**** Flight times are calculated at 9 miles per minute or .9 Mach
-----------------------

Kinda of slow for Mach 2 plus fighters. Any bets they had the pedal to the metal and busted Mach fast?

I forget who posted it. You don't need any National Command authority to intercept aircraft. Pre 911, there were more than a few TCAS alerts on airliners from fighters running practice intercepts on them.

Jack

General Myers? Did somebody mention General Myers? That guy owes me money! (And he owes all of us an explanation.)

General Myers was acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 11th. On September 13th, he's going for a nomination hearing to be made head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is the most important day of his life because on this day that Myers, an Air Force General with thousands of hours of time flying fighter planes, is acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—it’s the only day in history that the continental United States has ever been attacked from the air.

Myers claims he is at Senator Max Cleland's office at 8:40 EDT. He sees on TV that the first plane has hit the World Trade Center. He claims on Armed Services Radio that at that point he went in and met with Cleland for an hour. Nobody called him and told him that a second plane had hit, that the air corridor had been closed between Washington and Cleveland, that a plane had been hijacked in Ohio and was flying back to the Pentagon. Then he also claims that when he walked out of Cleland's office, he was handed a portable phone and it was the head of NORAD--the North American Aerospace Defense Command--telling him the Pentagon had been hit.

Now these are unbelievable assertions. Doesn't the man have a beeper? Doesn't the man have a cell phone? Doesn't the man have a secretary who knows where he is? General Myers was, after all, acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military. Wouldn't anybody inform him that planes were being hijacked and flying into buildings? And you know what Myers said he talked to Max Cleland about? He claims he sat there and they discussed the dangers of terrorism. Now this is like a satire, isn't it?

Here is General Myers' response at his confirmation hearing. Note Senator Max Cleland's out-of-the-blue nonsequitur which gives Myers his alibi.

Senate Armed Services Committee Holds Hearing On Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, D.C., SEPTEMBER 13, 2001.

SENATOR LEVIN: Was the Defense Department contacted by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, prior to the time that the Pentagon was hit?

GENERAL MYERS: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question. I can get that for you, for the record...That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck. ... I was with Senator Cleland when this happened and went back to the Pentagon. And they were evacuating, of course, the Pentagon at the time. And I went into the National Military Command Center because that's essentially my battle station when things are happening.

SENATOR LEVIN: Was the Defense Department contacted by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, prior to the time that the Pentagon was hit?

GENERAL MYERS: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question. I can get that for you, for the record.

SENATOR LEVIN: Thank you. Did the Defense Department take -- or was the Defense Department asked to take action against any specific aircraft?

GENERAL MYERS: Sir, we were . . .

SENATOR LEVIN: And did you take action against -- for instance, there have been statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down. Those stories continue to exist.

GENERAL MYERS: Mr. Chairman, the armed forces did not shoot down any aircraft. When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked. But we never actually had to use force.

SENATOR CLELAND: General, it's a good thing that, as I look back at that morning, that you and I were meeting. It's a good thing we were meeting here and not us meeting in the Pentagon because about the time you and I were having our visit, discussing the need to boost our conventional forces, to look at the question of terrorism and attacks on the United States, at just about that very moment, the Pentagon was being hit.

GENERAL MYERS: Yes, sir.

SENATOR BILL NELSON: ... General Myers, The second World Trade tower was hit shortly after 9:00. And the Pentagon was hit approximately 40 minutes later. That’s approximately. You would know specifically what the timeline was. The crash that occurred in Pennsylvania after the Newark westbound flight was turned around 180 degrees and started heading back to Washington was approximately an hour after the World Trade Center second explosion. You said earlier in your testimony that we had not scrambled any military aircraft until after the Pentagon was hit. And so, my question would be: why?

GENERAL MYERS: I think I had that right, that it was not until then. I'd have to go back and review the exact timelines.

SENATOR BILL NELSON: ... If we knew that there was a general threat on terrorist activity, which we did, and we suddenly have two trade towers in New York being obviously hit by terrorist activity, of commercial airliners taken off course from Boston to Los Angeles, then what happened to the response of the defense establishment once we saw the diversion of the aircraft headed west from Dulles turning around 180degrees and, likewise, in the aircraft taking off from Newark and, in flight, turning 180 degrees? That's the question. I leave it to you as to how you would like to answer it. But we would like an answer.

GENERAL MYERS: You bet. I spoke, after the second tower was hit, I spoke to the commander of NORAD, General Eberhart. And at that point, I think the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft...

{93questions' note: OK, so if he talked to Eberhart after the second tower was hit, why did he then meet with Cleland for 35 minutes to talk about "the question of terrorism and attacks on the United States"? I mean, wasn't he aware that America was currently experiencing just such an attack--the very worst such attack in its entire history? How in the world did he manage to while away the 45 minutes with Cleland such that he didn't arrive at the National Military Command Center, his admitted "battle station when things are happening," until the Pentagon was being evacuated (around 9:45 at the earliest)? Didn’t having hijacker terrorists hit the two tallest buildings in the United States with passenger jets qualify as a time "when things are happening"?}

In this case, if my memory serves me -- and I'll have to get back to you for the record -- my memory says that we had launched on the one that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania. I mean, we had gotten somebody close to it, as I recall. I'll have to check that out.

SENATOR BILL NELSON: ... Commenting from CNN on the timeline, 9:03 is the correct time that the United Airlines flight crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center; 9:43 is the time that American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. And 10:10 a.m. is the time that United Airlines flight 93crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. So that was 40 minutes between the second tower being hit and the Pentagon crash. And it is an hour ands even minutes until the crash occurred in Pennsylvania.

SENATOR LEVIN: The time that we don't have is when the Pentagon was notified, if they were, by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency, relative to any potential threat or any planes having changed direction or anything like that. And that's the same which you will give us because that's . . .

GENERAL MYERS: I can answer that. At the time of the first impact on the World Trade Center {93questions' note: around 8:40}, we stood up our crisis action team. That was done immediately. So we stood it up. And we started talking to the federal agencies. The time I do not know is when NORAD responded with fighter aircraft. I don't know that time.

SENATOR LEVIN: Or the time that I asked you for, which was whether the FAA or FBI notified you that other planes had turned direction from their path, their scheduled path, and were returning or aiming towards Washington, whether there was any notice from any of them, because that's such an obvious shortfall if there wasn't.

GENERAL MYERS: Right.

SENATOR LEVIN: And in any event, but more important, if you could get us that information.

GENERAL MYERS: It probably happened. As you remember, I was not in the Pentagon at that time, so that part of it is a little hazy. {93questions' note: This is now two days after 9/11.} After that, we started getting regular notifications through NORAD, FAA to NORAD, on other flights that we were worried about. And we knew about the one that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania. I do not know, again, whether we had fighters scrambled on it. I have to . . .

SENATOR LEVIN: If you could get us those times then. We know you don' t know them.

GENERAL MYERS: But we'll get them.

{93questions' note: Thank God the Senate quickly confirmed this knowledgeable bastion of combat-ready competence as the head of our entire US military structure!}

93,
How many times are you going to post the confirmation hearings on Meyers.

I suspect he had other things on his mind than to remember the exact times that things occurred and I would suspect that as the head of the JCS that by then they were head down planning on preventing new attacks and beginning the plan for retaliation.

Remember, the Pentagon got hit, he probably had people he knew and worked with die. He probably had been in damn near round the clock meetings since that morning and you thing because he doesn't know the exact minutes of some event or the exact time Norad was informed he is somehow not on the ball?

Please.

Arthur

Not quite.

Once again, I'm pretty sure he was doing his job as you point out, but, for some reason, he didn't want to talk about exactly what he was doing for the Congressional record.

I'm simply pointing out the ramifications of his own claims, but I certainly don't give them extraordinary credence and I'm actually more inclined to believe that Myers jumped into action that morning like every other good American who had a chance to help fight the terrorists.

93questions,

You have had 11 months and apparently nothing better to do, and you can't even get the events correct for when the transponder turned off on flight 93. Where is your credibility? Where is ability to gather the facts and present them? Screw pagers, you got a damn internet at your finger tips, and you still couldn't get the timeline correct even for the flight that you took your pen name from. Your arguments are without merit and are born from ignorance of reality. I'm glad you can copy and paste congressional testimony, and maybe even read it, but apparently it is beyond your attainment to comprehend what occurred both then and now.

[ August 20, 2002 07:21 AM: Message edited 2 times, lastly by Seven Fife ]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by adoucette:
[B]Jack,
I'm curious (never having flown a jet),
How long does it take to get up to Mach 1 or Mach 2?
Also if you were cruising into NY airspace at one of the peak arrival/departure times and with planes arriving at and departing from LaGuardia, JFK, Newark and WhitePlains would you come in above Mach 1? ------------------------------------

Well under a minute from taking off. Also depends on your configuration. Mainly lack of external tanks or bombs. Plus your fuel flow goes sky high. Rule of thumb it's 4 times the fuel flow for twice the thrust. Burner is a very loud fuel converting noise maker.

The problem with going supersonic is the boom. Which is dependent on altitude and ambient conditions. You don't read about much damage when the Shuttle arrives for landing and it's well above Mach 1.

If I had the green light to go max speed, no problemo blowing through NYC area <G> I would double check that my recording gear is working!!

Jack

Fighter pilot scrambled on Sept. 11 recounts experience
United Press International
Published 3:26 p.m. PDT Wednesday, August 21, 2002

HYANNIS, Mass., Aug. 21 (UPI) - One of the two military jet pilots scrambled from Cape Cod in Massachusetts after air controllers suspected a flight out of Boston had been hijacked thought he was witnessing the start of World War III when he saw the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City collapse.

While the two F-15s arrived too late to prevent the hijackers from crashing two passenger jet airliners into the towers, the fighter pilots couldn't have tried to shoot them down, anyway. They didn't have presidential permission to fire on a civilian passenger airplane, the pilot said.

"We were 70 miles out" - about eight minutes -when the second plane crashed into a tower, said one pilot identified only as Nasty. He spoke publicly about Sept. 11 for the first time in Wednesday's Cape Cod Times.



"All we saw was Lower Manhattan covered in dust and debris," said Nasty, 35, who follows protocol by using his call name rather than his real name in the media.

"I thought it was the start of World War III," he said.

Nasty said he and the other pilot, Duff, after a supersonic chase from Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod to New York City, were frustrated they couldn't have done more.

"We did everything we could do to get there in time," Nasty said.

However, by the time the fighters arrived over New York, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 - both hijacked after taking off from Boston's Logan International Airport - had already crashed into the towers.

Even if the military jets had arrived in time, Nasty said there was nothing they really could have done because the only one who could give orders to shoot down a civilian passenger jet was the president, and by the time he learned about the attacks the two planes had already crashed.

"If we had intercepted American 11, we probably would have watched it crash," he says. "We didn't have the authority to (shoot it down). We didn't suspect they would use kamikaze tactics that morning," Nasty said.

"We weren't ready for that type of an attack," Nasty said, "to quickly shoot down one of our own airplanes."

Jack adds, note the supersonic part. They had the pedal to the metal and a helluva of a lot faster than 10 miles a minute.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by adoucette:
Based on what evidence can one make the claim that they blew up Flight 93????

Considering the reports of the planes flight path during the last minutes, flying at low level, twisting and turning and well over Vne, the putting it in the ground by accident (or intentionally) seems quite reasonable.

UA 175 was twisting and turning too at speeds that were probably comparable to 93's. Yet it did not break up or ditch into the ground, rather it went smack dab into its intended target. All I am saying is that there is as much evidence for a bomb as there is for the "heroic passengers" putting the plane into a dive.

Assuming bomb residue / components were found why would the FBI surpress that as that would be valuable information as to our security needs? Makes no sense at all.

Maybe the bomb components haven't been found because they landed many miles away after being lofted by the fireball? images/smiles/icon_wink.gif

Only Atta and an associate named Alomari boarded via Portland, the rest boarded locally.

I know this is off topic, but I am wondering WHY these two dudes would go to Portland when all the others boarded at BOS?

BTW...Alomari was not the guy's name, that was a stolen identity:
http://www.mujahideen.fsnet.co.uk/wtc/wtc-hijackers.htm

Originally posted by Vostok1:
quote: I know this is off topic, but I am wondering WHY these two dudes would go to Portland when all the others boarded at BOS

I imagine they were trying to spread the risk around. In case airport security was an issue in BOS, they were hoping the Portland team would get through to maximize their chance of success.

Alternatively, they may have been hoping to avoid booking the same originating flights, in case that would have attracted some unwarranted attention.

What I wonder is why they only did this with AA 11? Why didn't they do the same with UA 175? Or with AA 77, why didn't somone catch an early morning flight from a smaller city to Dulles?

I've spent some time thinking about this as opposed to simply reacting to wild speculations and outlandish interpretations of innocuous statements.

However, one thing finally occured to me, and it bothered me because it took so long to finally sink in.

Re: Conspiracy theories related to Otis Jets, Pentagon Jets etc, etc ad nauseum.

What is the BEST THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED ON 9/11?

From reading all the links the best I can figure out is that at 8:25 the FAA became reasonably certain that they had a hijacking despite the fact that the hijacking transponder code was not set.

Had they immediately notified NEADS at 8:25 and NEADS had immediately ordered the OTIS jets to scramble, the jets could have gotten airborne at 8:37.

At an AVERAGE speed of 1,000 mph (which means a much faster top speed) it would have taken 10.5 minutes to get the 175 air miles to Manhatten. They would have been 1.5 minutes too late.

EVEN IF THEY HAD PERMISSION TO FIRE AND SOME WAY OF IDENTIFING THE AA-11 AIRCRAFT, they would have had to fire missiles that traveled at 2,000 mph from a distance of over 20 miles.

We don't have targeting systems or weapons that could pick that specific jet out of the traffic around JFK, Newark and LaGuaria.

So there is actually NO CONCEIVABLE WAY we could have prevented the first tower from being hit (and eventually collapsing)

Now, had the FAA/Military reacted with incredible foresight, skill and the 20/20 hindsight to know exactly which of the 3,400 aircraft in the sky that morning were the real threats, it is possible they could have shot the other three down. (assuming they didn't wait for presidental permission of course).

So again I say, the best that could have happened that morning is one plane into the WTC and three commercial aircraft shot down. The loss of lives would have been around 1/2 the total figure, the economic impact would have been about the same. The military response WOULD NOT BE DIFFERENT AT ALL. It still would have evoked the exact same response, so all of this conspiracy about "could we have shot down 175" or the pentagon aircraft, is totally meaningless. The US response would have been the same even if there had been but one plane that morning.

Arthur

Obviously, a few people have watched to many fictional movies and believed the "realistic" video games played in "beginner mode" to be knowledgeable about the real world.

Some things that might help:

There is not an escape pod on Air Force One. Both the USAF and the Director and Producers of the movie acknowledged this one as a plot device.

There is not an F-117 capable of carrying more than one person, and certainly not one that can mate to a 747 and transfer people on board to stop terrorist.

Military pilots are not allowed to buzz towers, General's daughters, or commercial aircraft.

There is no such thing as a red phone hotline between any given US civilian installation and NORAD/NEADS.

The FAA has no rights to authorize military jets to scramble, intercept, and especially attack a civilian airliner.

Commercial aircraft do not carry IFF transmitters, thus do not show up as red, blue, or yellow on the pilot's radar MFD. In most F-15's and F-16's, everything is green anyway.

Beyond visual range (BVR) attacks were not allowed during Desert Storm in an actual war time, combat theater. They certainly would not be allowed during a time of peace, over US airspace, and utilized against a civilian target that is one amongst many others in the nearby airspace controlled by three major airports and only suspected of being hijacked.

During the cold war, aircraft and crew sitting 24/7 alert status had requirements to be airborne in 5 minutes to intercept aircraft off the coast, typically outside commercial air routes, that had been tracked for minutes following a vector bringing them into US airspace, and once on intercept arrival had all the appearances of being a Russian built Bear bomber or other military aircraft. If along the Southern border, they typically were small civilian prop planes smuggling drugs. After the cold war, this process was discontinued.

There is no autoland button. Missile do not lock on to the bad guy civilian airliner automatically, especially the heat seeking kind.

Missiles do not vaporize an aircraft such that no debris lands anywhere.

NECAP/Looking Glass flights ended with the 24/7 alert aircraft.

Imagine for a moment, a typically over-stressed air traffic controller had the power to declare an aircraft hijacked and without any review of his/her findings, the military was called in and took immediate action. Weeks later, the media put on its 20/20 delayed vision goggles, and parsed the whole situation...

One dose of reality: If you were the hapless controller having to handle a situation in which 19 hijackers gave you 45 minutes to do whatever to save as many lives as possible in a scenario that had never occurred before, and 3,000 people die because of it; the 20 hijacker shouldn't be given death, but you should be tried for treason and hung within less than a year according to a self-professed member of the media and others that have chosen you to shoulder the burden of grief they bare.

Ignorance must really be bliss...

This just in...
Fighter Jet Escorts Plane to Md. (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20020827/ap_on_re_us/escorted_landing_3)

"There was a miscommunication between the pilot and the ground," Brown said.

An FBI spokesman in Baltimore, Barry Maddox, confirmed that an emergency code was mistakenly entered into the plane's radar transponder.

"It seemed to indicate a problem when it was not a problem," Maddox said. "They radioed back and said it was a mistake and the pilot was ordered to land at Baltimore."

This is during the post 9/11 era. I'm curious to see the public response to this action. One thing is for sure, we probably won't have to try the controller for treason. images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif

here are some fighters for NORAD truth who just try to implement 08:25 as the time for reasonable doubt of a hijacling and who try to argue about 15 minutes of delay as normal in pre911-times.

1) we are NOT talking about signs of hijacing.Wearetalking about reasonable causes to inform Noradto scramble interceptors.It might be technical problems, disease of the pilots - we do not know in pre911-times.

2) first signa arereported for 08:14 (transponder off and no radio). The change of direction at 08.24 is irrelevant, it is just another sign.

3) Only the first two signs are enough to cause to act according to the regulations, which say "immediately" call NORAD. It is the norad decision if and how to scramble, not of the flight controller.

4) So what we can see here is a nice deception: to blame a little bit the FAA, to elongate the timeline and to fit the fiction into reality

5) all in all it is to "explain" the time delay between 08:14 and the alleged 8:52(which we discussed in the other thread about UA93). More than half an hour. At least. In fact they must explain more than one hour untill the Pentagoncrash.

6) we were asked what could have happened best(which would have been STANDARD)That is:
alert in NORAD at 08:15, (immediately,standard)
scrambling at at least 08:30 (immediately,standard)
interception at 08:40, (immediately,standard)
call to the president in Sarasota (immediately,standard)
reaction in time before 08:45.(immediately,standard)

They try to tell us that all this standard was not possible and that the obstacles reach so far as to AA77. LOL.

no limo:

nobody accuses the government or pilots or the FAA or anybody not to have been EYTRAORDINARYLY QUICK, specially skilled, not having advanced knowledge, not to be Superman, not to have intuitions.

I am talking about
the STANDARD to call NORAD immediately,
the STANDARD to scramble in at least 15 minutes,
the standard to fly OTIS-Manhattan in 10-12 minutes,
the standard of intercept routines even without weapons,
the logic to send two allegedly late-coming F-15 at least not somewhere into the open but to send them to intercept at least AA77.

Why did they not meet the normal procedures? Especially since we know that allegedly nobody knew of these flights to be suicide missions, so everybody could have just calmly followed the regulations. No extras required.

We are wondering about the "miracles", about no investigation, about no material evidence, but open lies.
This government of innocence is able to immediately point to the "Islamists". So who must prove? Who makes allegations?

We ASK - and you dont provide answers, but only explanations why asking is wrong. We would not ask when the standards were met and when material evidence were in the open.