Merged Plane off course / Where were the fighters?

Dave Rogers

Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
Dave Rogers
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Just seen over on Social Issues and Current Events:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=157285

An airliner overflew its target airfield by 150 miles and was listed as NORDO ("no radio communications").


The aircraft flew over its intended destination -- Minneapolis-St. Paul International/Wold-Chamberlain Airport -- and continued northeast for approximately 150 miles over the next 16 minutes. The airport's controllers then re-established communication with crew members, who said they had become distracted, the safety board said.
"The crew stated they were in a heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness," the board said in a news release.
A federal official, who asked not to be identified, told CNN that air traffic controllers in the Denver area had communicated with the pilot, but during a subsequent communication the pilots were "nonresponsive." The plane was handed off to controllers in Minneapolis as a NORDO, the designation for "no radio communications."
Click to expand...

And yet, after being handed over from Denver to Minnesota as a NORDO, and even after overflying its destination by a quarter of an hour, the plane wasn't intercepted by fighters. So, even now, after 9/11, it seems that NORAD still won't have fighters on the tail of a plane within ten minutes of losing communication with the crew.

Dave
 
No radio communications doesn't constitute for alarm because the transponders would indicate a hijacked aircraft.

If the transponder were switched to hijacked then fighters would be able to intercept.

I think I know where this is going.

If Flight 93 was "shot down" then I've never seen nor heard jet fighters following it that day.

Johnstown Airport has Apache Helicopters, not jet fighters. And the airport's 20 miles north of Shanksville off of Rt. 219.
 
Plane off course for over 15 minutes

Hello all

This is mildly interesting:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/10/23/airliner.fly.by/index.html

A plane went off course for 150 miles, was unresponsive and hijacking was feared. After years of tightening up the regulations, the fighters weren't scrambled for the 16 minutes it took for the ATC to reach the pilots.

I'm torturing the very first twoofer as to how that fits in DR Griffins' claims that planes going off course will routinely be intercepted in "10 minutes or so", even before 9/11. It's quite enjoyable :)

McHrozni
 
McHrozni said:
I'm torturing the very first twoofer as to how that fits in DR Griffins' claims that planes going off course will routinely be intercepted in "10 minutes or so", even before 9/11. It's quite enjoyable :)

McHrozni
Click to expand...

[twoof]Pfftt...This only means that the new administration doesn't care about the electorate.[/twoof]
 
[truther] They decided against intercepting the plane because had they done so, it would have made the fact they didn't on 9-11 even more suspicious [/truther]
 
Seems the leading theory right now is that both pilots fell asleep. They're lucky that someone was able to wake them up before the fighters got scrambled.

Hard to convince anyone you died a hero's death when your last words are "zzzzz....*snort* wha?" *BOOOOOOOM*
 
It was out of radio contact for 74 minutes; no fighters took off in pursuit. Another truther myth bites the dust.

ETA: 78 minutes.

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The cockpit voice recorder from Northwest Flight 188, which flew past the Minneapolis airport during a mysterious 78 minutes of radio silence Wednesday night, was capable of recording only 30 minutes of audio, federal accident investigators said Friday.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The cockpit voice recorder from Northwest Flight 188, which flew past the Minneapolis airport during a mysterious 78 minutes of radio silence Wednesday night, was capable of recording only 30 minutes of audio, federal accident investigators said Friday."
 
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The fighters were ordered to stand down to give ammo to the duh-bunkers, duhhhh!!! [/twoof mode]
 
twinstead said:
[truther] They decided against intercepting the plane because had they done so, it would have made the fact they didn't on 9-11 even more suspicious [/truther]
Click to expand...

I don't think this is too far off the mark. No Truther worth his salt is going to believe two pilots conveniently failed to notice they were off course that long, thus providing us government shills with the perfect counterargument. I'd bet money some Truther somewhere will claim this was a set up.
 
Some questions:

How long did it take for the fighter jets to reach the plane since the first moment of unresponsiveness?

How long did it take for the fighter jets to reach the plane since NORAD (or whoever) were first informed?

Why the hell are aircraft today still only capturing 30 minutes worth of audio?
 
KJC said:
Some questions:

How long did it take for the fighter jets to reach the plane since the first moment of unresponsiveness?

How long did it take for the fighter jets to reach the plane since NORAD (or whoever) were first informed?

Why the hell are aircraft today still only capturing 30 minutes worth of audio?
Click to expand...

The fighters never left the ground.

As far as why planes are only capturing 30 minutes of audio, your guess is as good as mine.
 
I suppose that, in most cases, all they really need are the last five minutes of audio.
 
dropzone said:
I suppose that, in most cases, all they really need are the last five minutes of audio.
Click to expand...

The audio recorder looped every 30 minutes. It took more than 30 minutes from the moment the pilots woke up, or whatever, and got the plane on the ground. There is no useful audio in the black box unless the crew said something on the way to the ground.
 
Yeah where were they? We've learned so much since 9/11 haven't we? Thank God for the 9/11 commission and their recommendations. That was all on the up and up right?
 
Do they still use magnetic tape for the recording?
 
It really surprises me that no fighter jet intercepted in 78 minutes. I really thought that in a post-9/11 world, the military would be all over that.

News reports say fighter jets were put on "alert". Why not just put them in the air just in case?
 
I think the fact that the plane didn't make any deviations in heading was what kept it from being seen as more urgent. No one probably thought anything too serious was going on until it actually overshot the destination airport.
 
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