Payne Stewart

I've looked closely into the Payne Stewart intercept and determined that it took an hour for f-16s to intercept his lear jet. So that talking point should really be dropped and the question of whether interceptions of the hijacked planes should have occured in a more timely manner reexamined.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/oct99/crash26.htm

Pentagon officials said the military began its pursuit of the ghostly civilian aircraft at 10:08 a.m., when two Air Force F-16 fighters from Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida that were on a routine training mission were asked by the FAA to intercept it. The F-16s did not reach the Learjet, but an Air Force F-15 fighter from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida that also was asked to locate it got within sight of the aircraft and stayed with it from 11:09 a.m. to 11:44 a.m., when the military fighter was diverted to St. Louis for fuel.

you really should add some

you really should add some links, references, quotes, something when you post something like this. please update your post with such information.

i agree, please tell us how

i agree, please tell us how exactly you came to the conclusion of one hour.

Here's my source: Pentagon

Here's my source:
Pentagon officials said the military began its pursuit of the ghostly civilian aircraft at 10:08 a.m., when two Air Force F-16 fighters from Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida that were on a routine training mission were asked by the FAA to intercept it. The F-16s did not reach the Learjet, but an Air Force F-15 fighter from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida that also was asked to locate it got within sight of the aircraft and stayed with it from 11:09 a.m. to 11:44 a.m., when the military fighter was diverted to St. Louis for fuel.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/oct99/crash26.htm

updated your post.. FYI you

updated your post.. FYI you can modify your posts after you post them if you want to add to them. thanks.

Thanks.

Thanks.

It's because...

The fighter jets supposedly crossed a timezone that it took an hour and 19 minutes as opposed to just 19 minutes.

My question is, if he crossed a timezone going in the other direction, would he gain an hour?

No.
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"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this."

Jon, if the plane had been

Jon, if the plane had been headed in the opposite direction it very well may have appeared to have left at 10am and arrived at 10:20am but really have taken an hour and 20 minutes to catch the plane. I'm sure you've flown across timezones and gained hours.

Wait, reverse that last bit.

Wait, reverse that last bit. If the plane had taken off in the opposite direction it would have started at 10am and arrived at 12pm and gained an hour.

Ok...

I asked NORAD how long is the average response time for an intercept, and they said:

An F-15, with a top speed of 1,800 mph could intercept an aircraft 600 miles away flying parallel to where the fighter took off in 20+ minutes or so, now if the "target" aircraft is flying at 600 mph and heading toward the place where the fighter took off then the intercept would be at the 400 mile mark and would likely take only 13 minutes or so--theoretically, depending on winds and weather, etc...

Keeping that in mind, through the course of Stewart's ordeal, 6 military jets managed to intercept his plane.

How many military jets managed to intercept any of the hijacked planes on 9/11?

None.
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"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this."

My point was not to suggest

My point was not to suggest that the failure to intercept was acceptable, but was specifically about the Payne Stewart example.

If it takes an hour to intercept runaway planes...

we may as well scrap our trillion-dollar air defenses & save a hell of a lot of money to use elsewhere.

I agree that the money could

I agree that the money could be better spent.

Let's keep it in context

The Payne Stewart flight was not hijacked. It was not a commercial airliner with hundreds of people on board. It was not of the size or fuel capacity that would enable it to be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

Yet it was still intercepted by the airforce. Viewed in context, it still boggles the mind that we apparently could not get it together on the morning of 9/11.

I think the Payne Stewart comparison is a fair one to make, under the circumstances.

The point is that it appears

The point is that it appears to have taken an hour or so to reach Payne Stewart's plane.

What I can't figure out is why they didn't put up jets to circle DC as soon as the second plane hit the towers just as a precautionary measure. After all they knew the US was under attack.

even if

it took an hour in that case, they are totally different scenarios. The Stewart plane stopped responding and basically kept flying straight. There were no known hijackings taking place and the plane was not actively diverted. It wouldn't surprise me if given these fatcs there was not a sense of urgency about intercepting it. On 9/11 however, we were presumably UNDER ATTACK. Planes were known (believed anyway) to have been hijacked and diverted, and if memory serves, their transponders turned off. The difference in the situiations makes a comparison unreasonable as a defense of the failure to intercept on 9/11.

The other side of the coin,

The other side of the coin, of course, is that the Stewart plane had functioning transponders and was keeping a relatively straight course so it was easier to track and intercept. Either way if the comparison is unreasonable then people who are questioning the official story of 9/11 should stop making the comparison.

no, just make sure to make the right comaprisons

of course if we had all the info about all previous intercepts that would tell us something, but something tells me we won't be given access to that info, so we should go by what NORAD itself claimed (as cited by David Ray Griffin) which seemed to indicate that intercepts were routinely done in a matter of minutes. Again, if this was not the case, how could the US have been said to have an effective air defense?

Hijacked Airplanes

This is my first response to someone elses comments but when the airplane hijackings are discussed I think it should be clarified WHO did the hijacking.
Flight 77 was hijacked - but by who ?
Where did it go ?
We all know that it didn't crash into the Pentagon.
If our government hijacked the plane why would anybody expect our governments fighters to respond ?

How do we know 77 was hijacked?

Because Barbara Olson called someone from her Jaguar saying she was on that plane? We can't assume any aspect of the official story is true, we need non-falsifiable evidence. Flight manifest, video of collision, video of hijackers boarding, all the debris recovered and assembled, etc. When have we seen any of this? Never.

misterguy makes a reasonable

misterguy makes a reasonable point. But keep in mind Mineta's testimony regarding Cheney in the PEOC: "It's 40 miles out. It's 30 miles out..." Cheney was clearly in the PEOC and aware of an incoming flight between 9:10 and 9:20, and yet no jets and no antiaircraft weapons were used to intercept. And all of this was well after "America was under attack" (9:03).

The Washington Post wasn't the only paper to cover the story ...

"Instead, according to an Air Force timeline, a series of military planes provided an emergency escort to the stricken Lear, beginning with a pair of F-16 Falcons from the Air National Guard at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., about 20 minutes after ground controllers lost contact."

Source: Dallas Morning News

http://www.wanttoknow.info/991026dallasmorningnews