If someone wanted to hijack a commercial airliner, the Federal Aviation Administration would be on top of it, right?
Apparently not.
In the closest real test of the system since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FAA dropped the ball. Like woah. Seriously.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the FAA took more than 40 minutes to alert the military after losing communications with that Northwest Airlines flight last week. The Journal reported that officials are supposed to notified within 10 minutes of an incident.
Appropriately, the delay has ruffled more than a few feathers at the Pentagon, White House and FAA. However, more needs to be done.
According to the newspaper:
In the event of a hijacking, the military would order fighters into the air to intercept an aircraft and possibly shoot it down.
That, of course, could not happen if the military didn’t know about the hijacking.
It’s clear so many levels of the system broke down. But that can’t be overlooked. Remember, the system broke down on 9/11. We can’t afford for another 3,000 people to be murdered to realize that the system needs to be fixed — NOW.
According to the Journal, the delay was blamed on the local controllers’ focus on trying to re-establish contact with the airliner. Instead, they should have been contacting their supervisors. Ooops.
It’s good an investigation has been launched, but before it is over, the traffic controllers need to be terminated. There is no excuse for this mistake that could have cost thousands of American lives. This is not an issue America can take lightly.
