In a related story...
Posted on 10/29/2009 10:51:32 PM PDT by george76
The Federal Aviation Administration violated its own rules by taking more than 40 minutes to alert the military after losing communication with a Northwest Airlines flight last week, according to officials familiar with internal reviews under way at several federal agencies.
The delay has sparked consternation within the military, concern within the FAA and special oversight by the White House, these officials said, particularly because such time lags were supposed to be eliminated as a result of the lessons learned from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks...
the man charged with protecting the skies above North America, U.S. Air Force Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., said he was displeased with the way the situation evolved, stressing that notification should have been quicker and ...
FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said air-traffic controllers "should have notified [the military] more quickly that the plane was not responding." ...
"We are conducting an internal review," Mr. Babbitt said, "and will require retraining on proper notification procedures when we lose radio contact with aircraft."
According to FAA documents, the plane was out of touch with controllers for a total of about 75 minutes before it streaked over its intended destination, Minneapolis, on autopilot at 37,000 feet. The plane continued on for an additional 16 minutes before resuming communication.
One FAA air-traffic facility tried to raise the pilots by radio more than a dozen times, according to people familiar with the matter, and Northwest officials tried to reach the crew with eight separate text messages to the cockpit.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
In a related story...
In an interesting coincidence, 40 minutes after it knew of the hijacking was also the time it took the FAA to notify the military about flight 93 on 9/11.
The FAA needs to do much better.
At 500 miles per hour, these airlines can cover alot of ground.
After twenty minutes, the FAA should give the military a preliminary heads up.
As someone who flies for a living and interacts with the ATC/FAA alot I can tell you this is nothing new and not shocking in the least.
What will happen ?
Businesses as usual ?
Some low level guy will get popped for this, maybe a mid level ARTCC Supervisor and a big ole fat report will be written, sent up the food chain never to be seen again.
One has to understand that all jobs in the Government are immersed in a sea of Political Correctness. No employee is authorized to make any decision unless it is STAFFED through upper layers of Politically correct management so that if anything goes wrong, the upper echelons “will all have their stories straight” so that they can pin the blame on the lowest employee who touched the original problem addressed.
I used to be a manager in the government many years ago and this was the the most important rule.
You can bet your ass that the FAA controller immediately knew of the problem but never had the absolute authority to do anything about it unless it was cleared with upper management.
This is why Homeland Security is such a farce. There is no way they can protect you.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.