It would seem like a good procedure for as soon as a hijacking is reported, Fighters should be scrambled to at the very least follow the hijacked plane. Maybe the 1st plane would have made it into the WTC but knowing that the 2nd and the pentigon plane should have been blown out of the sky if they got near any building.
Maybe that is done, anyone know?
Pilots can signal they are being hijacked (not that I’m paranoid, but I don’t feel like saying how). The FAA will track them and attempt to have the hijacker arrested when the aircraft lands. Fighters are not sent up. What are they going to do? Shoot the hijacked plane down? Nobody thought that someone would crash an airliner full of people into a building. They wouldn’t have shot. Would they “fire one over the bow”, as it were, to warn the hijacker away? Where would the missile or the cannon rounds go? Into the city?
When Payne Stewart’s jet went astray there was talk about shooting it down if it looked as if it would crash into a populated area. They knew or strongly suspected everyone aboard was already dead, but they still just let the jet crash rather than shoot it down.
The pilots apperently never changed to transponder codes to indicate they were being hijacked, no sent any message. Furthermore, in the Pentagon case, the plane was on a normal approach to Reagan Airport (3 miles or so from the Pentagon) until the last few monents until it was too late.
You can’t escort a hijacked plane unless you know it’s hijacked.
I can’t beleive that someone didn’t think that a terrorist would fly a plane into a structure. Plus using fighters would be a deterent in itself and a show of force. Like I said the fighter (if it existed) would most likely not have been able to prevent the 1st crash into the WTC as it would have happened too suddenly but once that happened there was about 18 minutes to relay this info to the 2nd fighter that was following the 2nd plane (again if it existed) and as soon as it got close to the WTC (and pent) that’s when I can see them shooting it down.
You gotta wonder – did the hijackers kill the cabin crew and take over? Done quickly enough, there might have been no time to change the transponder codes. Geez, if a gun was to my head and I was ordered to slam into a building I’d like to think I’d have the courage to take the bullet.
Yes, but the first plane, which hit the WTC, made an abrupt over 90 degree turn out of its course. This should have alerted somebody. Perhaps they didn’t think it would strike the WTC, but what about the 2d? Shooting the plane out of the sky is what we may have done to the 4th.
I’m sure the authorities didn’t think it was impossible, but it is not the normal course a hijacking takes. When planes are hijacked, I’m guessing that the primary concern is to get the hostages out alive, not to keep the plane from crashing into a city.
Just heard that another hijacking was intercepted by Canadian fighters and was forced to land - don’t knopw many details and they aren’t sure if he was part of the group - maybe just bad timing but at least someone in Canada thought of the possibility and sent up some fighters.
I think someone on the plane called in that it was hijacked. In that sort of case the military can send someone to watch them but the hijacker can threaten to do something if they are followed, so its not much of a solution.
Plus, what a decision it would be to shoot the plane down or not right above New York.
The pilots and co-pilots were probably all killed right at the beginning of the hijacking, and terrorist pilots took over for the rest of the flight. I can’t imagine that the American pilots were at the controls when the planes crashed. Even if a crash was inevitable, the pilots could have ditched in the ocean, and saved everyone on the ground. I must conclude that the terrorists were in direct control of the planes, rather than forcing the regular pilots to do their bidding.
The Whitehorse Daily Star has what seems to be the straight dope on the canadian hijacking story:
Apparently the emergency transponder went off on a Korean jet when it got low on fuel after having to leave US airspace. The Canadians and the US military got nervous and treated the incident as a possible hijacking. Everything was eventually sorted out on the ground.
Seems as if there is something pilots can do in a hijacking (hinted at during one of the many news programs I saw today) so terrorist pilots must have been in place during these attacks. Sadly, we may all find out what these possible proceedured are during the next few days. All of us all over the world. Heck, the hijacker must have already known about this and maybe the general public are the only ones left in the dark about this.
Jois
I guess they don’t read Tom Clancey.
Yes, the terrorists were probably at the controls. But who knew? Without that information, and without the knowledge that the aircraft were to be used as flying bombs, authorities would try to peacefully diffuse the situation. In this case diffusing the situation would not have been possible. But no one is going to shoot down an airliner based on the information available at the time.
As I understand it, the first plane was a total surprise, and it was not necessarily clear that it wasn’t some sort of horrible accident. And 18 minutes really isn’t that much time. To take the course of action you are talking about, somebody would have had to recognize that this was a terrorist activity, recognize that a second plane had been hijacked while all the mess was still happening, and then get a fighter up in the air and to New york, intercept the plane and try to talk to them…
And you would have to try to talk to them, because it looks awfully bad to take fighter jets and shoot civilians out of the air with them. Especially if it’s some sort of false alarm with the second plane (cf that Korean jet) etc… All of this in 18 minutes from the moment the first to the second planes hit. And don’t forget that it wasn’t abundantly clear at first that it was an airplane that his the tower. it’s not like there was a lot of warning or anything.
Basically what I’m trying to say is that all of this came down in a very short period of time, and shooting commercial airliners out of the air over densely populated areas takes a bit of debating before it gets the ok.
Tenebras
Hindsight is 20/20, people. Fact is, there was no way for us to anticipate this.