Bless this man. He had so much on his shoulders that day, did his job to the best of his ability, and could possibly have saved lives by getting those planes out of the airspace.
He did well to understand the necessity to clear the airspace so promptly. I see that many younger people don’t understand that suicidal attacks were conceptually new. It’s amazing that air-traffic control managed to land every plane in the USA safely in just a few hours. The FAA did well to declare the whole country a no-fly zone so quickly too. The guy who made that decision was on his very first day in the job.
5:55 he was speaking locally for NY area but what eventually happened nation-wide was the same thing--all aircraft grounded to avoid confusion between which are hijacked and which aren't. (Reference the news of Canadian airport taking in all international flights bound for US due to grounding already in place in US--forced inbound flights to Canada airport.)
He did not explain why the military did not immediately send out fighter jets to intercept these hijacked planes especially the Pentagon which is one of the most protected air space in the world?! The plane that hit the Pentagon was heading to California and did a u turn out in Pennsylvania then traveled for over 20 minutes before hitting the Pentagon so they had plenty of time to intercept it. And by the way military are keen on finding aircraft that don't want to be found, so their systems don't rely on aircraft having transponders turned on. Many years later there are still a lot of unanswered questions.
I understand it seems very easy, but the US is a very large country with huge space to cover, and with thousands of flights up at any given day - it's a pretty chaotic situation. After flight 11 was hit, there was a call about a phantom flight 11, from Colin Scoggins, who reported erroneously that Flight 11 was not, in fact, the aircraft that hit the North Tower at 08:46, as had been previously believed, but that it was still in the air and heading towards Washington. NEADS responded to this report by giving a scramble order to three fighters from the 119th Fighter Wing on alert at Langley Air Force Base at 09:24, and by 9:30 they were in the air. American Airlines Flight 77 took off from Dulles International Airport outside Washington D.C. at 08:20. The last transmission from the flight took place at 08:50:51. Later, after hearing about the hijacked planes hitting the World Trade Center, Indianapolis Center suspected that Flight 77 may also have been hijacked, and shared this information with FAA Command Center at Herndon, where staff contacted FAA Headquarters in Washington at 09:25. The FAA did not contact NEADS to make this report. This phone call was initiated by NEADS in an attempt to locate Phantom Flight 11. At 09:35, Colin Scoggins from the FAA's Boston Center again called NEADS to inform them that they had located an aircraft, which later turned out to be Flight 77, heading toward Washington D.C. at a high speed. Two minutes later, a NEADS radar technician spotted a target he believed to be Flight 77. This radar target was in fact Flight 77, but the target vanished as soon as it was discovered. NEADS officials urgently ordered the fighters from Langley to be sent to Washington immediately, but the plane struck the Pentagon at 09:37:46. The Langley fighters were still 150 miles away. Also this guy has nothing to do with sending out any fighter jets, so I don't really understand what you expect him to explain.
Depends what you think intercepts means. Hijackings usually land and demands are made. You would look to shoot down before the aircraft is over an urban area but you'd need to be certain it was going 'down' into that area or aiming at a target (which was pretty unprecedented at the time). You'd have to be certain it wasn't trying to land at an airport, of which there are many in the area. By the time it was certainly going into a tower it would almost be too late. Over simplistic. Our military and radar capability now is night and day compared to back then, it's far more advanced today and globally all airspaces coordinate better between military/civilian precisely because of 9/11. Yes the aircraft travelled for about 20 minutes but as you know, the crew were unable to squawk in time which they would be expected to do in a hijacking, a change in direction is abnormal but not indicative of anything sinister straight away.
Two unarmed Air National Guard F15s scrambled from Virginia and tried to intercept the plane that eventually crashed in PA. In an admitted that they agreed that they would ram the plane if possible. Unfortunately, the plane crashed before they could reach it.
2:15 primary target aka hijackers turned off transponders which displayed aircraft on systems for military and civilian side so primary target is just random data that happened to line up with aircraft's current position--no other way to confirm it other than how controllers/other aircraft visually confirmed before its impact.
They had box cutters and the hijackers threatened they had bombs. I don't think they ever did. Prior to 9/11, small knives like pocket knives were permitted. Definitely a different time.
I think you watch too many movies. They don't exactly have a bunch of armed jets sitting around all ready to take off at a moment's notice to intercept aircraft
Kinda funny that people don't believe that military jets can't get in the air within minutes. When Russia gets anywhere close to Alaska Canadian and American jets are in the air under 3 minutes to intercept them. No aggression from either side but Russia has tested us and we've escorted them numerous times. Usually Canadia fighter aircraft with an American fuel plane in support but sometimes more of a mixture
