9/11 highjacked aircraft shot out of the skies.

Never. And you?



ok so how does it work?

Tell me what happens normally when air traffic control report an aircraft significantly deviating from its flight plan, and unable to get a response or explanation. Please.

Eh, yes, please - since that seems to be totally different to e.g. here.

A few hundred times.



If a plane goes off course and the civilian controllers are unable to contact the plane they normally divert another airborne plane in the area to take the 1st look. At the same time they clear the air space around the route the plane is flying and notify any airports in the vicinity of an in-flight emergency and the watch supervisor is notified of the situation.

Prior to 9/11 the watch supervior would coordinate with the regional air traffic handlers who are the ones that make the decision to call FAA HQ or not. The FAA has an emergency response team that monitored progress of the flight and determined the best way to handle the situation. If the Emergency reponse team decided that they needed a military intercept they would contact the Pentagon and the Pentagon Emergency Response team would determine where the closest military installations are and coordinate with them to see if they have an aircraft that can be launched immediately. The Pentagon Team would be the people that would contact NORAD and have them launch planes if that was the best available option (and it usually is). (In the Payne Stewart case you mentioned earlier a military unit happened to have aircraft in the air at the time the call came to them so those planes were sent to check out the situation while other planes were readied and sent up at later stages as the flight progressed.)

Because of some of the issues that came up with 9/11 a few things have changed. Military air traffic controllers didn't use to monitor civilian flights within the US. They now do. This is because when the FAA first notified the military on 9/11 they didn't pass on the coordinates of the plane so the interceptors that were launched didn't know where to find the planes. With the military monitoring they can see the coordinates themselves.

There are also communications systems being built to connect the FAA regional centers directly to the military regional centers to eliminate some of the time lag in getting FAA HQ and the Pentagon to pass info back and forth and the watch supervisor of the military regional facility can direct military aircraft into the air (they can't order a shoot down though!). The military regional centers still don't have direct commuincations with every flying unit in their region so they still rely mostly on the NORAD facilities for intercepts. That will probably continue for the long term because it's extremely expensive to keep alert ready planes and crews available at every single installation.

There is still a lot of discussion about how communications should be tied together post-9/11 and the Bush Administration just took a hit from the 9/11 commission for taking so long on that.

Fishin

Steve asked


Whatever the procedures were on 9/11 I would hope that by this time they have been updated to respond to threats such as these.There must have been some capability availabe since Cheney allegedly gave the order to shoot the airliner down, And in fact, It was reported, he thought that one or is it two had been downed. Was that just another administration pipe dream,Or CYA?

Thanks.

Steve, I don't know what the policy is now. But formerly, whether military, commercial airliner, or private airplane, any pilot who is seriously off course in any 'suspicious' airspace would soon be acompanied by armed fighter planes and escorted back to the registered flight path or to the nearest airport. In most cases such pilots would also be required to write and submit a lengthy report explaining their deviance from the registered flightpath.

It does take a bit of time for the controller to determine the plane is off course and nonresponsive before the escort planes are scrambled to go get them, and then of course the escort planes need time to get to and identify the errant aircraft.

(This from a local uncle who flew in WWII and subsequently flew for Braniff Airlines.)

Yes thanks Fishin

I'm always ready to take on board first hand knowledge.

Now please tell me in your opinion why things went so wrong at AAFB on 11th September 2001

IMO, nothing went wrong at Andrews AFB because there was nothing to go wrong there.

There were 2 units with airplanes capable of acting as an interceptor - the DC ANG unit and a Marine Corps Reserve unit. Neither was manned and neither had planes that were flight ready. It would have taken 6 to 8 hours to get crews in, prep and arm the planes and get them airborne. If they had had full ground crews and pilots there on hand when they got the call it would have still taken them at least an hour to get planes into the air.

This type of tasking was not and never has been a part of their function at Andrews.

Here is another link I found interesting that answered these questions.

http://www.9-11commission.gov/

I just hope that we have a better plan now in place in case something happens again with less people to go through in order to act in time to try and prevent something from succeeding.