I Knew There Was Something Odd There

When that Delta-Northwest flight overflew MSP last week, I thought it was kind of odd that the Air Force had jets sitting on the runway, but never launched them as the unresponsive plane approached and then flew over the Twin Cities. As it turns out, by the time the Air Force was actually notified, if it had been a terrorist hijacking it would have been too late:

The U.S. military would have launched fighter jets to track down an errant Northwest Airlines flight that overshot the Minneapolis airport if officials had been notified sooner, a top commander said Thursday as federal authorities defended the decision to revoke the licenses of the pilots involved.

Gen. Gene Renuart, who heads U.S. Northern Command, said he learned of the incident just four or five minutes before the Federal Aviation Administration regained contact with the pilots, who flew 150 miles past their destination. They have said they got distracted while using their laptops in the cockpit.

It seems there was a smaller but still disturbing delay at NORAD also:

While Renuart would not disclose the precise timetable of events, he said his staff was aware of the problem for roughly 10 minutes and had just alerted the fighter aircraft before they told him about Flight 188 — a gap he also said must be corrected.

It appears the FAA had been out of contact with the flight for at least an hour at that point.

So it was at least 50 minutes before the FAA notified NORAD that they had an unresponsive commercial airliner on their hands? Is that true? If so, what the hell is up with that? 

I said last week that I know the Twin Cities are probably not high on any terrorist target list compared to other cities. The plane was also flying its flight path at a high altitude. And as far as I can tell, there were no major crowd events going on that night. But there are a couple of nuclear power plants that would have been reasonably close along that flight path along with any number of targets in the metro area. All it would have taken would be a sudden change in the planes attitude and ten minutes or less to turn that mystery into a terrorist attack. I hate to think of our Air Force shooting down a plane full of passengers, but better that than a jet crashing into a nuclear power plant.

If the Air Force had been notified, the pilots almost certainly would have taken no action so long as the plane proceeded at high altitude, and perhaps would have gotten their attention if they really weren't asleep. But because the FAA didn't act, there was no one around to act if that plane suddenly took a dive at any number of targets.

That's as inexcusable as the actions of the pilots themselves, and just as disturbing. If not more.

Comments

[Marie]

Very interesting. This whole thing is getting more and more insane. I would have thought there would be procedures and protocols for notifying the Air Force or whoever when something generally "goes awry" (as opposed to something specific which no one could possibly have imagined).

Also, I've been looking for bloggers who were passengers on this flight. Maybe I'm searching the wrong words, but I haven't found any. Surely there were clock watchers on that flight and what were they thinking. I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I think there's more to this than what we've been told.

[Rob]

Unless there is a reason for our air defenses to be on high alert, I think there will always be holes and breakdowns. Those pilots stumbled on one of them by accident. Everyone is saying it needs to be corrected because they have to say that. Air defense NOW has reason to be on high alert but that reason will ultimately fade away again because people can't function in that state indefinitely. It will never be airtight but it surely can be better.

That pilots can ignore communication from the ground concerns me most. I would never suggest that the ground should be able to take control of the aircraft like can be done on space shuttles but I think something severe to get the pilot's attention should be implemented.

[Dave E.]

Marie-Yeah, it is pretty weird and I'm not sure I buy the official stories. Though the basic rule of never ascribe to malice what can be explained with simple incompetence probably applies. I wonder how many other federal agencies have become as complacent as the FAA.

Rob-I'm pretty sure there are always Air Force crews on alert status across the US at any given time. There may not be many, but there's always a few.

An airline-based visible and audible alarm, one that works through the normal airline communications channel, strikes me as a good idea. On the other hand, maybe this situation is so rare that it really isn't necessary.