Nyctohylophobia

MYTH The Air Force was stood down on 9/11 to allow the planes to hit their targets

The fighter speeds were adequate. Before 9/11 NORAD was not sufficiently prepared to deal with internal air threats. There were 4500+ other planes in the sky at the time of the hijackings and so finding the hijacked flights--with their transponders off--on radar was extremely tough. Alerts were not automated. The FAA mistakenly notified NORAD that Flight 11 was headed for Washington when it had crashed into the North Tower some 35 minutes beforehand. Delta Flight 1989 was erroneously identified by the FAA as hijacked at 9:41 A.M. NEADS was informed of Flight 175's hijacking at 9:03 A.M. when it was too late at Flight 175 had plowed into the South Tower. Payne Stewart's Learjet is cited as an example of rapid response when in fact his jet was not intercepted for 76 minutes! Intercepts prior to 9/11 and even after 9/11 have taken longer than 10 minutes; a 10 minute scramble time is not realistic given the preparatory measures taken prior to scrambling.¹ Identification of hostile planes and and interception is not something that is a certainty, and before 9/11 it wasn't. On 9/11 at Andrews Air Force Base there were no available fighters on alert, "combat ready" can be something of a misnomer. There were no "live-fly" hijacking drills occurring on 9/11 (confirmed by Don Arias), and no one has said their were hijacking drills on September 11th, and evidently no war games involving hijackings were planned. Some cite the 6/1/01 change in intercept procedures as the hard copy of the stand down order, but close comparison between this and the previous code reveals that there was no negative effect on intercepts.

[1] From http://cooperativeresearch.org/phorum5/read.php?3,158:
"1. Recognize that a hijacking had taken place, not that a transponder was turned off, or that an aircraft was not responding to radio calls.
2. Notify their supervisor in the room with them that they believed an aircraft had been hijacked. Take the time needed to brief the supervisor why they believed an aircraft was being hijacked.
3. Route aircraft away from the suspect aircraft as supervision notified their immediate superiors of the situation.
4. The immediate superiors of the controller's supervision would begin to contact NORAD, but this would only begin after being briefed of the situation, and the controllers in front of the scopes reasoning for making the call.
5. Once contacting NORAD, the FAA personnel would have to explain to the personnel at NORAD what was occuring, where it was occuring, and again how they came to be aware of the situation.
6. NORAD personnel now have to upchannel this information to their supervision, along with the what, when, where, and whys so that these supervisors can make the call to the responsible base.
7. NORAD would pass the command to the base covering the airspace affected to launch aircraft to meet the threat.
8. Wing level command having received the command from NORAD now have to notify the Squadron level command to get the aircraft airborne.
9. The command being given would lead the crew chiefs/pilots to mobilize to the ready alert aircraft "kicking the tires and lighting the fires" (the kicking the tires part been done at beginning of the alert shift)
10. With the aircraft now running they have to take the time to taxi to a runway, and take the needed time to get airborne and then be directed to the threat by ATC."

9/11
NORAD
Standdown
USAF
9/11 Commission
Wargames
War games
Payne Stewart
NEADS
FAA