Line Of The Day

I got a chuckle out of this from one of the passengers on that Delta-Northwest flight that overshot the Twin Cities the other night:

"Either way, every one of us on that flight want the extra miles put on our perks card," he said.

It seems only fair to me.

It also seems kind of strange to me that they didn't scramble at least one fighter to check out what was going on as the plane approached Minneapolis. They just monitored it as it flew over the Twin Cities. Would that have been the case if the plane had been approaching New York or DC? I bet it wouldn't. Not that I think the Twin Cities is high on any terrorist target list, but didn't we just inadvertently tell them something that may apply to a lot of smaller cities?

Comments

[Kate P]

That was a good quote.

And YES to your concern--75 minutes without communication!?!?!?!? What were they waiting for?

[Dave E.]

It's good to have a sense of humor.

I'm still surprised that nobody seems to be talking about why those jets weren't scrambled, Kate. As far as I know, the closest fighters would be in Grand Forks or Duluth. I'm not sure about that. The wing based at MSP flies C-130s. If that had been a hijacked plane, by the time they did something provocative there would be no options left. Not like I want to contemplate having to shoot down a passenger jet, of course, but who knows what the target could have been? It just seems to me that they blew that call.

[Mr. Bingley]

Dave, are there any fighters there, though?

I know part of the problem we had on 9/11 was that there were basically only a few fighters on the entire east coast, given the overseas commitments. Remember how we had to have canadian awacs flying patrols...scary stuff.

[Dave E.]

I'm not up to speed on regional AF deployments in detail, Mr. B. I'm sure there are a few wings in the region at any given time.