Military now notified immediately of unusual air traffic

HERNDON, Va. -- The Federal Aviation Administration has stayed in closer contact with the military since Sept. 11 to ensure that fighter jets take off quickly to chase hostile or suspicious aircraft.

On Sept. 11, flight controllers suspected around 8:25 a.m. EDT that American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston's Logan Airport had been hijacked, but the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) wasn't notified until 8:40 a.m. -- six minutes before the plane struck the World Trade Center.

Today, NORAD would know instantly of a suspected hijacking.

"NORAD is now linked up telephonically 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so anything that's an anomaly or a suspected anomaly that's found in the system, NORAD knows about it as quickly as we do," said David Canoles, FAA's manager of air traffic evaluations and investigations.

At a NORAD operations center in Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, Colo., a noncommissioned officer listens to conversations on the FAA network from all over the United States, said Maj. Douglas Martin, NORAD spokesman.

"If he hears anything that indicates difficulty in the skies, we begin the staff work to scramble," Martin said. Before Sept. 11, the FAA had to telephone NORAD about any possible hijackings.

From Sept. 11 to June, NORAD scrambled jets or diverted combat air patrols 462 times, almost seven times as often as the 67 scrambles from September 2000 to June 2001, Martin said.

In June, Air Force jets scrambled three times to intercept small private planes that had wandered into restricted airspace around the White House and around Camp David, the presidential retreat.

Jet fighters approaching a suspicious plane might radio the pilot, tip their wings or simply identify the aircraft and break off, Martin said. No one has been shot out of the sky since Sept. 11, he said; for that, an order must come from President Bush or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.