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The Price of Unarmed Pilots
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Amid terror, a drastic decision: Clear the skies
By Alan Levin, Marilyn Adams and Blake Morrison, USA TODAY
By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY
"Unable to elaborate": United Airlines Capt. Jim Hosking received the above message as he flew over the Pacific on Sept. 11.
Capt. Jim Hosking is stunned as he reads the message from the cockpit printer aboard United Flight 890. On most days, messages sent to the Boeing 747 are ordinary: maintenance items or reports of bad weather. On this day, Sept. 11, before sunrise over the Pacific Ocean, the warning is unlike any he has seen.Hijackings? Terrorist attack? Taking off from Narita, Japan, just hours before, Hosking, 56, looked forward to heading home to Los Angeles, where his wife would be waiting.But reading the message, sent at 9:37 a.m. Eastern Time, the pilot of 34 years wonders: What the hell happened down there?And then, even more chilling: What's going to happen up here?
"SHUT DOWN ALL ACCESS TO FLIGHT DECK." In the cabin behind him sit 243 passengers - all of them strangers to Hosking. He turns toward first officer Doug Price. "Get out the crash ax," Hosking tells him.
At the Federal Aviation Administration's command center in Herndon, Va., air traffic managers also struggle to make sense of what's happening.
Already, terrorists have deliberately flown two jets into the `World Trade Center. The hijackings are unlike anything anyone has seen. In the past, hijackers commandeered passenger jets for political reasons. Pilots were told to cooperate with them, to take the hijackers wherever they wanted to go.
Today, the hijackers don't want to go anywhere. They just want the jets.
At the FAA's command center, managers can think of only one way to stop them. Minutes after another jet smashes into the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m., the managers issue an unprecedented order to the nation's air traffic controllers:
Empty the skies.
Land every flight.
Fast.
No one can be certain how difficult this task will prove.
But for an air traffic control system sometimes paralyzed by a patch of bad weather, the order seems overwhelming. Almost 4,500 planes will have to land within hours, many at airports hundreds of miles from where they were headed.
The situation could be worse. On this day, the weather is pristine over most of the nation. And the early hour means most West Coast flights haven't even taken off.
Still, the skies have never been emptied before, and controllers, pilots and aviation officials have never faced such pressure. Rerouting so many flights seems a logistical nightmare with no margin for error.
And no one knows how many terrorists might still be in the air. During these hours, those who run the nation's aviation system will come to believe as many as 11 flights have been hijacked.
This is the story of the four most critical hours in aviation history - an ordeal that began at 8:15 a.m., when the first indication that something was wrong came during a telephone call to American Airlines.
8:15 a.m. ET: 3,624 planes in the sky
Intruders in the cockpit
The call doesn't make any sense. Not at first.
At American Airlines' operations center in Fort Worth, manager Craig Marquis talks to a reservations agent in North Carolina. The agent isn't sure what to do.
On another line, the agent is speaking with a flight attendant who's in the air but can't reach the pilots on her jet. The agent wants to transfer the call to Marquis but the phone system won't let her. So she begins to relay messages coming from the back of American Flight 11, a Boeing 767 heading from Boston to Los Angeles.
Aboard, flight attendant Betty Ong tells what's unfolding.
Marquis, a blunt-spoken veteran, isn't sure what to make of the call. Is the woman even a flight attendant? he wonders. He checks his computer as he listens on the phone. There she is. Betty Ong. And she is on that flight.
Ong can't contact the pilots, the agent says. That's why she's calling. Why doesn't she just walk up to the cockpit and bang on the door? But as he listens - as Ong, in hushed tones, tells of a passenger dead and a crewmember dying, of the jet's erratic path and intruders in the cockpit - Marquis realizes that Ong can do little.
The flight has been hijacked.
As Marquis, 45, considers what he can do, air traffic controllers at the FAA's Boston Center reach the same conclusion. Flight 11 has stopped talking. Its pilots don't respond to calls; its transponder signal has disappeared. Worse, controllers report hearing a man with a strange accent in the cockpit.
"We have some planes," he says through an open mike. "Just stay quiet and you will be OK."
Could more hijackers be out there?
In the FAA's command center in Herndon, Ben Sliney learns of the radio transmission. The words will haunt him all morning. "We have some planes."
Some? How many?
By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY
"Order everyone to land": Sept. 11 was Ben Sliney's first day on the job as national operations manager at the Federal Aviation Administration's command center in Herndon, Va. Hours after starting, Sliney ordered the airspace over the United States cleared-the first time in history such an order had been given.
Sept. 11 is Sliney's first day on the job as national operations manager, the chess master of the air traffic system. The New Yorker, a lawyer who once sued the FAA on behalf of air traffic controllers, now walks the floor of the center - a room that resembles NASA's Mission Control.
Loud and forceful, Sliney fits the mold of others there. After managers at the center were criticized for not taking enough action to prevent record flight delays in 1999, the specialists were urged to speak freely during crises. That way, those in charge would have the information they needed to make sound decisions. On this day, that policy will be put to the test, and the center is deafening, like the New York Stock Exchange when everyone's trying to sell.
"We have some planes..."
Sliney can't shake the words. Are there more hijackers out there?
8:30 a.m.: 3,786 planes
"Wow, look at that!"
In the FAA's largest air traffic facility in New York state - a warehouse-like structure on Long Island, an hour east of Manhattan - manager Mike McCormick rushes to the banks of radar screens where controllers are trying to track Flight 11.
The former Marine presses his cordless phone to one ear as he talks to officials at other facilities in the New York area. But the other ear is doing most of the listening - to the radio reports of pilots who are watching the jet's progress.
Over New York, Flight 11 has begun to descend. Not into JFK or LaGuardia or Newark International Airport but into the city itself.
It must have electrical problems, he thinks. That's probably why the transponder is off. McCormick calls another air traffic center that hands off flights to New York's three major airports. Flight 11, he warns, might try an emergency landing.
In Fort Worth, Gerard Arpey, American Airline's Executive vice president for operations, hears about the Ong call and the strange transmissions from Flight 11. In his 20 years with American, Arpey, 43, has grown used to stories about misbehaving passengers - the drunks and disorderlies that airlines encounter. But this, he thinks, this seems more than that. This sounds real.
He tries to reach his boss, CEO Don Carty, but Carty isn't in yet. Then he heads to the airline's command center, where top operations officials gather only in the event of an emergency. They're all here, Arpey thinks as he walks through the door.
All but Craig Marquis.
Just down the hall, in the airline's operations center, Marquis hasn't left the phone. Still listening to the relayed words of Ong, he works to calculate how much fuel the jet carries. That way, he may be able to predict where the hijackers will take the flight. But at 8:46 a.m., the North Carolina agent abruptly loses Ong's call. Marquis' calculations no longer matter.
At Newark's tower, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, controller Rick Tepper, 41, stands at a console behind a group of other controllers.
By Eileen Blass, USA TODAY
"Oh my God! He just hit the building": From his tower at Newark International Airport, air traffic Rick Tepper watched the north tower of the World Trade Center erupt into flame, then spotted United Flight 175 flying north up the Hudson River toward the Trade Center.
There, he answers phones and troubleshoots problems. He and the other controllers often wear jeans and polo shirts. The attire belies their intense work ethic.
When Tepper looks past the controllers, he sees it out the window: a mushroom cloud rising from the World Trade Center's north tower.
"Wow! Look at that," he says to no one in particular. Flames shoot from the building. "How are they going to put that out?"
He didn't see what caused the explosion, but on the chance that it was a plane, he begins calling airports nearby.
"Did you lose anybody?" he asks over and over. No one has.
Then, a phone rings: the "shout line," set up for speedy calls among controllers in the region. Tepper answers. "We've lost an aircraft over Manhattan," someone at the New York center says. "Can you see anything out your window?"
"No, I don't see anything ... " Tepper pauses. "But one of the towers, one of the trade towers, is on fire.
"I'll call you back."
9 a.m.: 4,205 planes
"This is not a drill!"
At the New York center, McCormick struggles to keep up with the barrage of information, most of it annoyingly vague.
That must have been American 11, McCormick thinks. Could it be terrorism?
Just three days before, celebrating his 45th birthday, he had taken his 8-year-old son Nicholas to the Trade Center. There they stood, toes touching one tower, peering toward the sky.
Now he tries to figure out why an airliner would've hit the building. Just before American disappeared, controllers heard an emergency beacon. From what? McCormick wonders. And controllers can't find a helicopter that has disappeared from radar over the city. Did it hit the Trade Center, too?
In Herndon, national operations manager Sliney receives word from officials in New York: A small plane has crashed into the Trade Center. One of the room's 10-by-14-foot TV monitors comes to life with CNN. Black smoke gushes from the north tower. The hole is huge. And the smoke!
That was no small plane, Sliney thinks.
At United Airlines headquarters outside Chicago, Andy Studdert rushes to the airline's crisis center, a windowless room with a large screen on one wall. To those who work there, the room resembles the bridge on Star Trek's starship Enterprise.
"Confirm American into the Trade Center!"
Workers don't need to look up to recognize the booming baritone of Studdert, 45, the airline's chief operating officer.
Ten days earlier, he had popped a surprise drill on the staff. He told them a flight over the Pacific had suffered a potentially disastrous engine failure and radio contact had been lost. For 30 minutes, workers believed the story. Then Studdert told them the truth.
On this day, he makes certain everyone knows the stakes. "This is not a drill!" he shouts, but the staff already knows.
What they are about to tell Studdert is even worse than what brought their boss to the crisis center. Controllers have lost radio contact with a second flight - a United jet that, like American Flight 11, took off from Boston bound for Los Angeles.
On the giant screen at the front of the room, airline workers can only watch as United Flight 175, northwest of New York, heads toward Manhattan.
Then ... it vanishes.
"There was another one!"
In the Newark tower, the shout line rings again.
Where's United Flight 175? "Can you see him out the window?" the caller asks Tepper, the Newark controller.
Beyond the New Jersey shipyards, Tepper spots the jet flying north, up the Hudson River. His eyes track it toward the Manhattan skyline. It's moving fast. Too fast. And rocking. Its nose points down in a dive and now it's banking left and then right and moving as Tepper has never seen a jet move and then it starts to level and ....
"Oh my God! He just hit the building," Tepper tells the caller.
In Herndon, a shout: "There was another one!" and the giant TV monitor glows orange from the fireball. Scores of workers gasp, as if sucking the air from the room.
It can't be a second one. At the New York control center, McCormick's deputy, Bruce Barrett, sits incredulous at the watch desk, the facility's nerve center.
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
Barrett: As he prepared to clear the skies in the Northeast, he worried about his daughter in Manhattan.
For a moment, Barrett can think only of his daughter, Carissa, who works in lower Manhattan. Could she be visiting someone at the Trade Center? Then he sweeps the thought from his mind. Stay calm, he tells himself.
Someone has to. Controllers who had been watching TV in the break room are rushing onto the floor. They saw the jet hit the other tower. Is there really any question what he should do?
"We're declaring ATC zero," he tells air traffic managers. McCormick approves the order. Clear the skies over the region.
If they have overreacted, the decision could ruin both their careers. But after what they just witnessed, they give little thought to asking for permission. A call to Washington could take minutes, and they aren't sure they have that long. They aren't certain of anything, except that they need to do something.
A handful of managers spread the word to controllers. It doesn't seem like enough, Barrett thinks, but it's the most he can do.
The time: 9:03 a.m.
A radical decision
On its face, the order seems incredible. Not a single flight in or out of New York? Some of the nation's biggest airports shut down?
Controllers had gone to "air traffic control zero" before, but only when their radar shut down or their radio transmitters went silent. The planes kept flying then, and controllers in other centers guided them.
This time, ATC zero means something far more drastic. It means emptying the skies - something that has never been attempted. And not just the skies over Manhattan. Controllers must clear the air from southern New England to Maryland, from Long Island to central Pennsylvania - every mile of the region they control.
The move reverberates through almost every part of the nation. Controllers from Cleveland to Corpus Christi must reroute jets headed to the region and put some in holding patterns.
In the windowless room of the New York control center, Barrett, at 56 one of the facility's most senior managers, scans the faces of the other managers. Most pride themselves on their macho, can-do attitudes. Cool under pressure. Calm during the worst. But this ... who has prepared for this? In the dim light, Barrett sees that they're looking at him strangely, as though they can't believe what he's saying.
One controller begins to sob and shake. "I don't understand how come I'm reacting like this," the controller says. It reminds Barrett of the traumatized troops he saw as a photojournalist in Vietnam.
You're scared, Barrett thinks, but he can't afford to be. He needs to concentrate. To focus. But his phone! It won't stop ringing. Everyone wants to know what's going on, including his wife, Denise. She asks about their daughter.
"I don't have time to talk to you," Barrett tells her. "Just call and find out if she's OK."
The white board
At the FAA's command center in Herndon, attention shifts from the weather maps and the radar displays.
The new focus: a white dry-erase board propped at the front of the room.
On it, staffers have begun to scribble the call letters of every flight that controllers around the nation fear might be in the hands of hijackers.
Weather experts and the specialists who normally work on reducing flight delays have been drafted to investigate. They badger airlines to find out whether anyone knows what's happening aboard a number of flights. On this day, the routine glitches of the air traffic system - a missed radio call, even a pilot who seems uncooperative - raise suspicions. Unless a controller or airline official can assure them the glitch is simply routine - that the captain is responding and everyone is safe - the flight's letters won't be crossed out.
The phone bridges between air traffic facilities have become emergency hotlines of sorts, and the reports of possible hijackings - many of them sketchy - flow at a frenetic pace.
As Sliney, the operation's manager, moves around the room, a handful of air traffic specialists follow. Together, they have decades of experience, and no one hesitates to share an opinion. But without good information, Sliney knows that any decision might be risky. Amid the shouts and chatter and conflicting reports, he reminds himself: Don't jump to conclusions. Sort it out.
Now, during a massive conference call among air traffic facilities, officials in Herndon learn about a third jet that might be in the hands of hijackers: American Airlines Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles.
The jet departed from Washington's Dulles International Airport. It stopped talking to controllers somewhere near the Ohio-Kentucky border. Moments later, it disappeared from radar. Its call letters join the list on the white board - a list that will eventually swell to 11.
But why? What is this about? Across the nation, controllers and airline and aviation officials struggle to understand.
These weren't typical hijackings. Terrorists weren't seeking political asylum or a trip to Havana. They were using the two jets as guided missiles. They meant to hit the World Trade Center. No question about that.
Most of the pilots in the air don't know what has happened. Or why. How could they? Officials on the ground are still trying to make sense of it.
Pilots have always been trained to cooperate with terrorists, to do whatever they want in order to save lives. That means a crew probably won't fight back, at least not at first. And who knows how many other flights have terrorists aboard?
Again, Sliney hears them: the words that came from Flight 11.
"We have some planes."
9:15 a.m.: 4,360 planes
Unprecedented decisions
From the moment air traffic managers McCormick and Barrett start to clear the airspace over New York, government and airline officials across the nation - almost in unison - begin to take similar, unprecedented steps.
In Fort Worth, American operations managers huddle, talking breathlessly about their options. They already have lost one flight. And now, Flight 77 has disappeared. Do they have a choice?
Manager Marquis' voice booms over the loudspeaker. "Anything that hasn't taken off in the Northeast," he says, "don't take off."
At the FAA's command center in Herndon, officials worry about what might be unfolding. Maybe there's another wave of hijacked jets coming off the West Coast. And what about the international flights?
The center halts takeoffs of all flights bound for New York and New England. Then officials stop takeoffs for any flight headed to Washington, D.C. Moments later, they freeze takeoffs headed to Los Angeles, the destination of the two hijacked flights that crashed into the Trade Center. Then to San Francisco.
The orders will keep hundreds of flights on the ground. As in surgery, each step clamps shut another artery of the air traffic system.
But the moves aren't strong enough for some of the air traffic specialists at the center, who bombard Sliney with advice.
"Just stop everything! Just stop it!"
The words ring true to Sliney. It doesn't matter who said them - with the noise in the room, it's hard even to know. But stopping everything, he thinks. That makes sense.
At 9:25 a.m., with Flight 77 still unaccounted for, Sliney issues another order that no one has ever given: full groundstop. No commercial or private flight in the country is allowed to take off.
The decision is sweeping, but Sliney has no doubt he has made the right call. And if he's wrong? At least he has erred on the side of safety. If higher-ups want to second-guess him, so be it. He has left the agency before to practice law, and he knows if he has to depart again - if someone thinks he's screwed up - he can leave with no regrets.
What he doesn't know - what no one knows - is how crucial this order to ground planes will prove when controllers are asked later to clear the skies.
9:25 a.m.: 4,452 planes
Watch and wait
In the New York control center, Bruce Barrett wonders what lies ahead. Scores of overseas flights are heading to New York. Though many are hours from landing, rerouting them from the now-closed airspace will be far more difficult than clearing the skies over the area had been.
Over land, controllers can see jets on radar and reach them by radio. But those tools are useless beyond a 200-mile band near the shoreline. The New York center's oceanic controllers must use a complicated system to guide jets. They estimate a jet's position and issue commands to a private company, which relays them to the jet. If the jet doesn't follow a command, controllers might never know.
Barrett already has told the oceanic supervisor to turn every jet away from U.S. airspace. The primary option: Canada.
"Are you sure this is where we want to go?" the supervisor asked.
Yes, he was certain. But now, he learns that Canadian authorities are not. An official there tells the supervisor that Canada cannot accept all the arrivals streaming across the North Atlantic.
"Just be emphatic," Barrett tells the supervisor, "and tell them they're not coming here."
In Herndon, Sliney considers his options. Do something. Make a decision. That's the credo of the air traffic controller. Make a decision.
But what? What should he do? Already, they have stopped takeoffs nationwide. What else can they do? Land every plane?
Throughout the morning, few had agreed what the right move was. Officials in Herndon initially questioned whether managers in New York had overstepped their authority when they cleared the airspace there. But all of the moves had proved right. And now, a consensus is building: They should land every plane.
Then, just before 9:30 a.m., a report comes from a controller at Washington Dulles International Airport. She has a jet on radar, heading toward Washington and without a transponder signal to identify it. It's flying fast, she says: almost 500 mph. And it's heading straight for the heart of the city. Could it be American Flight 77?
The FAA warns the Secret Service. Fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia race toward Washington. They won't get there in time.
'Get to the nearest airport'
On his way to the office in Fort Worth, Don Carty, American's CEO, talks on his cell phone. Flight 77 has vanished, he is told.
He was at home when Flight 11 hit the Trade Center. The TV in the kitchen was on. "Could that be your airplane?" his wife asked. Her face went pale.
Carty, 55, told her no. No, of course not; it couldn't have been. But even he didn't believe what he was saying. By the time Carty reaches the office, a jet is bearing down on Washington. Is it Flight 77? A groundstop will keep flights from taking off. But what about the ones in the air? he wonders.
At the airline's operations center in Fort Worth, vice president Arpey takes charge. "I think we better get everything on the deck," Arpey says. What the hell am I doing? he thinks, but Carty concurs when he arrives minutes later.
"Do it," he says, and Arpey puts the order out to land every American plane.
At United headquarters in Elk Grove, Ill., operations head Studdert issues a similar order: "Tell them to get to the nearest airport they can."
Before this day, no airline has ordered all of its planes from the sky.
'Where's it going?'
At FAA headquarters, less than a half-mile from the White House and Capitol, Dave Canoles paces before a speakerphone.
The head of air traffic investigations, Canoles has set up phone connections with air traffic facilities. As different regions come on the line, the reports of suspicious planes accumulate. We might be at war by afternoon, Canoles thinks. The FAA had better be ready. Already, some air traffic centers had considered evacuating. Canoles told them to stay put.
Now, about 9:35 a.m., he and others on the conference call listen as an official watching a radarscope tracks the progress of the jet heading for Washington.
Canoles sends an investigator who works for him to an adjoining office with a view to the west. "See if you can spot it," he tells him.
"Six miles from the White House," a voice on the phone says.
Canoles glances outside, through a window facing north. He wonders if he and his co-workers are in danger. At 500 mph, the jet is traveling a mile every seven seconds.
"Five miles from the White House."
No way the FAA is a target, Canoles thinks. It can't be.
"Four miles from the White House."
They'd never choose to hit us. No way.
"The aircraft is circling. It's turning away from the White House."
Where? Where's it going?
Then: "It's gone."
In the adjoining office, the investigator spots smoke to the west of the city.
The jet has hit the Pentagon. The time: 9:38 a.m.
'Order everyone to land'
For the last 30 minutes, since the second Trade Center tower was hit, Sliney has considered bringing every flight down. Now, the manager in charge of the nation's air traffic system is certain.
He has no time to consult with FAA officials in Washington.
The skies are filled with guided missiles, he thinks. Filled with them. The words he cannot shake have proved true. The hijackers did have more planes.
"Order everyone to land! Regardless of destination!" Sliney shouts.
Twenty feet away, his boss, Linda Schuessler, simply nods. She had organized the command center earlier that day, trying to create order from the chaos so Sliney could focus on what had to be done.
"OK, let's get them on the ground!" Sliney booms.
Within seconds, specialists pass the order on to facilities across the country. For the first time in history, the government has ordered every commercial and private plane from the sky.
9:45 a.m.: 3,949 planes
A misunderstanding
In Washington, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey and her deputy, Monte Belger, have been moving back and forth between a secret operations center and their offices.
By Paul Whyte, USA TODAY
FAA Administrator Jane Garvey approved the order to clear the skies.
Throughout the morning, staffers have kept Garvey and Belger apprised of Sliney's decisions.
Now, they tell them of the order to clear the skies. With little discussion, the FAA leaders approve.
Minutes later, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta calls from a bunker beneath the White House, where he has joined Vice President Cheney. Belger explains that the FAA plans to land each plane at the closest airport, regardless of its destination.
Mineta concurs. FAA staffers, following the conversation over the speakerphone with Belger, pump their fists. Then the conversation sours.
Mineta asks exactly what the order means.
Belger says pilots will retain some discretion. All the FAA deputy means is that under long-standing aviation regulations, pilots always have some discretion in the event of an emergency aboard their aircraft. But the secretary assumes the FAA is not being tough enough. "F-- pilot discretion," Mineta says. "Monte, bring down all the planes."
Ready for a fight
Aboard United Flight 890 over the Pacific, Capt. Hosking and another pilot, Doug Price, wait anxiously for news.
A third pilot, "Flash" Blackman, sleeps in the bunkroom in the cockpit of the 747, unaware of what's unfolding.
"Why don't we just let him sleep?" Hosking suggests. Price, set for the next break, agrees.
"I couldn't go to sleep if I wanted to," Hosking says.
The message about the hijackings arrived only minutes ago, but the two already have decided: Hijackers are aboard their flight.
They don't know that for sure. But they decide to believe it, if only to keep the jet safe. For years, they had been instructed to cooperate with hijackers. No longer. This time, they won't give up without a fight, not when they know someone might try to hijack the jet.
Quickly, they wedge their bags between a jump seat and the flimsy cockpit door. The door opens inward and, with the suitcases there, no one can budge it. Not without a lot of effort.
And if someone does manage to get through the cockpit door?
Price will be waiting as Hosking flies the jet. He has the cockpit's hatchet-sized crash ax in hand, along with orders to use it.
"If someone tries to come in that door, I don't want you to hurt him," Hosking says. "Kill him."
Tuesday: Searching for more hijackers
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2002/2002-08-12-clear-skies.htm#more
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
By Alan Levin, Marilyn Adams and Blake Morrison, USA TODAY
By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY
"Unable to elaborate": United Airlines Capt. Jim Hosking received the above message as he flew over the Pacific on Sept. 11.
Capt. Jim Hosking is stunned as he reads the message from the cockpit printer aboard United Flight 890. On most days, messages sent to the Boeing 747 are ordinary: maintenance items or reports of bad weather. On this day, Sept. 11, before sunrise over the Pacific Ocean, the warning is unlike any he has seen.Hijackings? Terrorist attack? Taking off from Narita, Japan, just hours before, Hosking, 56, looked forward to heading home to Los Angeles, where his wife would be waiting.But reading the message, sent at 9:37 a.m. Eastern Time, the pilot of 34 years wonders: What the hell happened down there?And then, even more chilling: What's going to happen up here?
"SHUT DOWN ALL ACCESS TO FLIGHT DECK." In the cabin behind him sit 243 passengers - all of them strangers to Hosking. He turns toward first officer Doug Price. "Get out the crash ax," Hosking tells him.
At the Federal Aviation Administration's command center in Herndon, Va., air traffic managers also struggle to make sense of what's happening.
Already, terrorists have deliberately flown two jets into the `World Trade Center. The hijackings are unlike anything anyone has seen. In the past, hijackers commandeered passenger jets for political reasons. Pilots were told to cooperate with them, to take the hijackers wherever they wanted to go.
Today, the hijackers don't want to go anywhere. They just want the jets.
At the FAA's command center, managers can think of only one way to stop them. Minutes after another jet smashes into the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m., the managers issue an unprecedented order to the nation's air traffic controllers:
Empty the skies.
Land every flight.
Fast.
No one can be certain how difficult this task will prove.
But for an air traffic control system sometimes paralyzed by a patch of bad weather, the order seems overwhelming. Almost 4,500 planes will have to land within hours, many at airports hundreds of miles from where they were headed.
The situation could be worse. On this day, the weather is pristine over most of the nation. And the early hour means most West Coast flights haven't even taken off.
Still, the skies have never been emptied before, and controllers, pilots and aviation officials have never faced such pressure. Rerouting so many flights seems a logistical nightmare with no margin for error.
And no one knows how many terrorists might still be in the air. During these hours, those who run the nation's aviation system will come to believe as many as 11 flights have been hijacked.
This is the story of the four most critical hours in aviation history - an ordeal that began at 8:15 a.m., when the first indication that something was wrong came during a telephone call to American Airlines.
8:15 a.m. ET: 3,624 planes in the sky
Intruders in the cockpit
The call doesn't make any sense. Not at first.
At American Airlines' operations center in Fort Worth, manager Craig Marquis talks to a reservations agent in North Carolina. The agent isn't sure what to do.
On another line, the agent is speaking with a flight attendant who's in the air but can't reach the pilots on her jet. The agent wants to transfer the call to Marquis but the phone system won't let her. So she begins to relay messages coming from the back of American Flight 11, a Boeing 767 heading from Boston to Los Angeles.
Aboard, flight attendant Betty Ong tells what's unfolding.
Marquis, a blunt-spoken veteran, isn't sure what to make of the call. Is the woman even a flight attendant? he wonders. He checks his computer as he listens on the phone. There she is. Betty Ong. And she is on that flight.
Ong can't contact the pilots, the agent says. That's why she's calling. Why doesn't she just walk up to the cockpit and bang on the door? But as he listens - as Ong, in hushed tones, tells of a passenger dead and a crewmember dying, of the jet's erratic path and intruders in the cockpit - Marquis realizes that Ong can do little.
The flight has been hijacked.
As Marquis, 45, considers what he can do, air traffic controllers at the FAA's Boston Center reach the same conclusion. Flight 11 has stopped talking. Its pilots don't respond to calls; its transponder signal has disappeared. Worse, controllers report hearing a man with a strange accent in the cockpit.
"We have some planes," he says through an open mike. "Just stay quiet and you will be OK."
Could more hijackers be out there?
In the FAA's command center in Herndon, Ben Sliney learns of the radio transmission. The words will haunt him all morning. "We have some planes."
Some? How many?
By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY
"Order everyone to land": Sept. 11 was Ben Sliney's first day on the job as national operations manager at the Federal Aviation Administration's command center in Herndon, Va. Hours after starting, Sliney ordered the airspace over the United States cleared-the first time in history such an order had been given.
Sept. 11 is Sliney's first day on the job as national operations manager, the chess master of the air traffic system. The New Yorker, a lawyer who once sued the FAA on behalf of air traffic controllers, now walks the floor of the center - a room that resembles NASA's Mission Control.
Loud and forceful, Sliney fits the mold of others there. After managers at the center were criticized for not taking enough action to prevent record flight delays in 1999, the specialists were urged to speak freely during crises. That way, those in charge would have the information they needed to make sound decisions. On this day, that policy will be put to the test, and the center is deafening, like the New York Stock Exchange when everyone's trying to sell.
"We have some planes..."
Sliney can't shake the words. Are there more hijackers out there?
8:30 a.m.: 3,786 planes
"Wow, look at that!"
In the FAA's largest air traffic facility in New York state - a warehouse-like structure on Long Island, an hour east of Manhattan - manager Mike McCormick rushes to the banks of radar screens where controllers are trying to track Flight 11.
The former Marine presses his cordless phone to one ear as he talks to officials at other facilities in the New York area. But the other ear is doing most of the listening - to the radio reports of pilots who are watching the jet's progress.
Over New York, Flight 11 has begun to descend. Not into JFK or LaGuardia or Newark International Airport but into the city itself.
It must have electrical problems, he thinks. That's probably why the transponder is off. McCormick calls another air traffic center that hands off flights to New York's three major airports. Flight 11, he warns, might try an emergency landing.
In Fort Worth, Gerard Arpey, American Airline's Executive vice president for operations, hears about the Ong call and the strange transmissions from Flight 11. In his 20 years with American, Arpey, 43, has grown used to stories about misbehaving passengers - the drunks and disorderlies that airlines encounter. But this, he thinks, this seems more than that. This sounds real.
He tries to reach his boss, CEO Don Carty, but Carty isn't in yet. Then he heads to the airline's command center, where top operations officials gather only in the event of an emergency. They're all here, Arpey thinks as he walks through the door.
All but Craig Marquis.
Just down the hall, in the airline's operations center, Marquis hasn't left the phone. Still listening to the relayed words of Ong, he works to calculate how much fuel the jet carries. That way, he may be able to predict where the hijackers will take the flight. But at 8:46 a.m., the North Carolina agent abruptly loses Ong's call. Marquis' calculations no longer matter.
At Newark's tower, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, controller Rick Tepper, 41, stands at a console behind a group of other controllers.
By Eileen Blass, USA TODAY
"Oh my God! He just hit the building": From his tower at Newark International Airport, air traffic Rick Tepper watched the north tower of the World Trade Center erupt into flame, then spotted United Flight 175 flying north up the Hudson River toward the Trade Center.
There, he answers phones and troubleshoots problems. He and the other controllers often wear jeans and polo shirts. The attire belies their intense work ethic.
When Tepper looks past the controllers, he sees it out the window: a mushroom cloud rising from the World Trade Center's north tower.
"Wow! Look at that," he says to no one in particular. Flames shoot from the building. "How are they going to put that out?"
He didn't see what caused the explosion, but on the chance that it was a plane, he begins calling airports nearby.
"Did you lose anybody?" he asks over and over. No one has.
Then, a phone rings: the "shout line," set up for speedy calls among controllers in the region. Tepper answers. "We've lost an aircraft over Manhattan," someone at the New York center says. "Can you see anything out your window?"
"No, I don't see anything ... " Tepper pauses. "But one of the towers, one of the trade towers, is on fire.
"I'll call you back."
9 a.m.: 4,205 planes
"This is not a drill!"
At the New York center, McCormick struggles to keep up with the barrage of information, most of it annoyingly vague.
That must have been American 11, McCormick thinks. Could it be terrorism?
Just three days before, celebrating his 45th birthday, he had taken his 8-year-old son Nicholas to the Trade Center. There they stood, toes touching one tower, peering toward the sky.
Now he tries to figure out why an airliner would've hit the building. Just before American disappeared, controllers heard an emergency beacon. From what? McCormick wonders. And controllers can't find a helicopter that has disappeared from radar over the city. Did it hit the Trade Center, too?
In Herndon, national operations manager Sliney receives word from officials in New York: A small plane has crashed into the Trade Center. One of the room's 10-by-14-foot TV monitors comes to life with CNN. Black smoke gushes from the north tower. The hole is huge. And the smoke!
That was no small plane, Sliney thinks.
At United Airlines headquarters outside Chicago, Andy Studdert rushes to the airline's crisis center, a windowless room with a large screen on one wall. To those who work there, the room resembles the bridge on Star Trek's starship Enterprise.
"Confirm American into the Trade Center!"
Workers don't need to look up to recognize the booming baritone of Studdert, 45, the airline's chief operating officer.
Ten days earlier, he had popped a surprise drill on the staff. He told them a flight over the Pacific had suffered a potentially disastrous engine failure and radio contact had been lost. For 30 minutes, workers believed the story. Then Studdert told them the truth.
On this day, he makes certain everyone knows the stakes. "This is not a drill!" he shouts, but the staff already knows.
What they are about to tell Studdert is even worse than what brought their boss to the crisis center. Controllers have lost radio contact with a second flight - a United jet that, like American Flight 11, took off from Boston bound for Los Angeles.
On the giant screen at the front of the room, airline workers can only watch as United Flight 175, northwest of New York, heads toward Manhattan.
Then ... it vanishes.
"There was another one!"
In the Newark tower, the shout line rings again.
Where's United Flight 175? "Can you see him out the window?" the caller asks Tepper, the Newark controller.
Beyond the New Jersey shipyards, Tepper spots the jet flying north, up the Hudson River. His eyes track it toward the Manhattan skyline. It's moving fast. Too fast. And rocking. Its nose points down in a dive and now it's banking left and then right and moving as Tepper has never seen a jet move and then it starts to level and ....
"Oh my God! He just hit the building," Tepper tells the caller.
In Herndon, a shout: "There was another one!" and the giant TV monitor glows orange from the fireball. Scores of workers gasp, as if sucking the air from the room.
It can't be a second one. At the New York control center, McCormick's deputy, Bruce Barrett, sits incredulous at the watch desk, the facility's nerve center.
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
Barrett: As he prepared to clear the skies in the Northeast, he worried about his daughter in Manhattan.
For a moment, Barrett can think only of his daughter, Carissa, who works in lower Manhattan. Could she be visiting someone at the Trade Center? Then he sweeps the thought from his mind. Stay calm, he tells himself.
Someone has to. Controllers who had been watching TV in the break room are rushing onto the floor. They saw the jet hit the other tower. Is there really any question what he should do?
"We're declaring ATC zero," he tells air traffic managers. McCormick approves the order. Clear the skies over the region.
If they have overreacted, the decision could ruin both their careers. But after what they just witnessed, they give little thought to asking for permission. A call to Washington could take minutes, and they aren't sure they have that long. They aren't certain of anything, except that they need to do something.
A handful of managers spread the word to controllers. It doesn't seem like enough, Barrett thinks, but it's the most he can do.
The time: 9:03 a.m.
A radical decision
On its face, the order seems incredible. Not a single flight in or out of New York? Some of the nation's biggest airports shut down?
Controllers had gone to "air traffic control zero" before, but only when their radar shut down or their radio transmitters went silent. The planes kept flying then, and controllers in other centers guided them.
This time, ATC zero means something far more drastic. It means emptying the skies - something that has never been attempted. And not just the skies over Manhattan. Controllers must clear the air from southern New England to Maryland, from Long Island to central Pennsylvania - every mile of the region they control.
The move reverberates through almost every part of the nation. Controllers from Cleveland to Corpus Christi must reroute jets headed to the region and put some in holding patterns.
In the windowless room of the New York control center, Barrett, at 56 one of the facility's most senior managers, scans the faces of the other managers. Most pride themselves on their macho, can-do attitudes. Cool under pressure. Calm during the worst. But this ... who has prepared for this? In the dim light, Barrett sees that they're looking at him strangely, as though they can't believe what he's saying.
One controller begins to sob and shake. "I don't understand how come I'm reacting like this," the controller says. It reminds Barrett of the traumatized troops he saw as a photojournalist in Vietnam.
You're scared, Barrett thinks, but he can't afford to be. He needs to concentrate. To focus. But his phone! It won't stop ringing. Everyone wants to know what's going on, including his wife, Denise. She asks about their daughter.
"I don't have time to talk to you," Barrett tells her. "Just call and find out if she's OK."
The white board
At the FAA's command center in Herndon, attention shifts from the weather maps and the radar displays.
The new focus: a white dry-erase board propped at the front of the room.
On it, staffers have begun to scribble the call letters of every flight that controllers around the nation fear might be in the hands of hijackers.
Weather experts and the specialists who normally work on reducing flight delays have been drafted to investigate. They badger airlines to find out whether anyone knows what's happening aboard a number of flights. On this day, the routine glitches of the air traffic system - a missed radio call, even a pilot who seems uncooperative - raise suspicions. Unless a controller or airline official can assure them the glitch is simply routine - that the captain is responding and everyone is safe - the flight's letters won't be crossed out.
The phone bridges between air traffic facilities have become emergency hotlines of sorts, and the reports of possible hijackings - many of them sketchy - flow at a frenetic pace.
As Sliney, the operation's manager, moves around the room, a handful of air traffic specialists follow. Together, they have decades of experience, and no one hesitates to share an opinion. But without good information, Sliney knows that any decision might be risky. Amid the shouts and chatter and conflicting reports, he reminds himself: Don't jump to conclusions. Sort it out.
Now, during a massive conference call among air traffic facilities, officials in Herndon learn about a third jet that might be in the hands of hijackers: American Airlines Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles.
The jet departed from Washington's Dulles International Airport. It stopped talking to controllers somewhere near the Ohio-Kentucky border. Moments later, it disappeared from radar. Its call letters join the list on the white board - a list that will eventually swell to 11.
But why? What is this about? Across the nation, controllers and airline and aviation officials struggle to understand.
These weren't typical hijackings. Terrorists weren't seeking political asylum or a trip to Havana. They were using the two jets as guided missiles. They meant to hit the World Trade Center. No question about that.
Most of the pilots in the air don't know what has happened. Or why. How could they? Officials on the ground are still trying to make sense of it.
Pilots have always been trained to cooperate with terrorists, to do whatever they want in order to save lives. That means a crew probably won't fight back, at least not at first. And who knows how many other flights have terrorists aboard?
Again, Sliney hears them: the words that came from Flight 11.
"We have some planes."
9:15 a.m.: 4,360 planes
Unprecedented decisions
From the moment air traffic managers McCormick and Barrett start to clear the airspace over New York, government and airline officials across the nation - almost in unison - begin to take similar, unprecedented steps.
In Fort Worth, American operations managers huddle, talking breathlessly about their options. They already have lost one flight. And now, Flight 77 has disappeared. Do they have a choice?
Manager Marquis' voice booms over the loudspeaker. "Anything that hasn't taken off in the Northeast," he says, "don't take off."
At the FAA's command center in Herndon, officials worry about what might be unfolding. Maybe there's another wave of hijacked jets coming off the West Coast. And what about the international flights?
The center halts takeoffs of all flights bound for New York and New England. Then officials stop takeoffs for any flight headed to Washington, D.C. Moments later, they freeze takeoffs headed to Los Angeles, the destination of the two hijacked flights that crashed into the Trade Center. Then to San Francisco.
The orders will keep hundreds of flights on the ground. As in surgery, each step clamps shut another artery of the air traffic system.
But the moves aren't strong enough for some of the air traffic specialists at the center, who bombard Sliney with advice.
"Just stop everything! Just stop it!"
The words ring true to Sliney. It doesn't matter who said them - with the noise in the room, it's hard even to know. But stopping everything, he thinks. That makes sense.
At 9:25 a.m., with Flight 77 still unaccounted for, Sliney issues another order that no one has ever given: full groundstop. No commercial or private flight in the country is allowed to take off.
The decision is sweeping, but Sliney has no doubt he has made the right call. And if he's wrong? At least he has erred on the side of safety. If higher-ups want to second-guess him, so be it. He has left the agency before to practice law, and he knows if he has to depart again - if someone thinks he's screwed up - he can leave with no regrets.
What he doesn't know - what no one knows - is how crucial this order to ground planes will prove when controllers are asked later to clear the skies.
9:25 a.m.: 4,452 planes
Watch and wait
In the New York control center, Bruce Barrett wonders what lies ahead. Scores of overseas flights are heading to New York. Though many are hours from landing, rerouting them from the now-closed airspace will be far more difficult than clearing the skies over the area had been.
Over land, controllers can see jets on radar and reach them by radio. But those tools are useless beyond a 200-mile band near the shoreline. The New York center's oceanic controllers must use a complicated system to guide jets. They estimate a jet's position and issue commands to a private company, which relays them to the jet. If the jet doesn't follow a command, controllers might never know.
Barrett already has told the oceanic supervisor to turn every jet away from U.S. airspace. The primary option: Canada.
"Are you sure this is where we want to go?" the supervisor asked.
Yes, he was certain. But now, he learns that Canadian authorities are not. An official there tells the supervisor that Canada cannot accept all the arrivals streaming across the North Atlantic.
"Just be emphatic," Barrett tells the supervisor, "and tell them they're not coming here."
In Herndon, Sliney considers his options. Do something. Make a decision. That's the credo of the air traffic controller. Make a decision.
But what? What should he do? Already, they have stopped takeoffs nationwide. What else can they do? Land every plane?
Throughout the morning, few had agreed what the right move was. Officials in Herndon initially questioned whether managers in New York had overstepped their authority when they cleared the airspace there. But all of the moves had proved right. And now, a consensus is building: They should land every plane.
Then, just before 9:30 a.m., a report comes from a controller at Washington Dulles International Airport. She has a jet on radar, heading toward Washington and without a transponder signal to identify it. It's flying fast, she says: almost 500 mph. And it's heading straight for the heart of the city. Could it be American Flight 77?
The FAA warns the Secret Service. Fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia race toward Washington. They won't get there in time.
'Get to the nearest airport'
On his way to the office in Fort Worth, Don Carty, American's CEO, talks on his cell phone. Flight 77 has vanished, he is told.
He was at home when Flight 11 hit the Trade Center. The TV in the kitchen was on. "Could that be your airplane?" his wife asked. Her face went pale.
Carty, 55, told her no. No, of course not; it couldn't have been. But even he didn't believe what he was saying. By the time Carty reaches the office, a jet is bearing down on Washington. Is it Flight 77? A groundstop will keep flights from taking off. But what about the ones in the air? he wonders.
At the airline's operations center in Fort Worth, vice president Arpey takes charge. "I think we better get everything on the deck," Arpey says. What the hell am I doing? he thinks, but Carty concurs when he arrives minutes later.
"Do it," he says, and Arpey puts the order out to land every American plane.
At United headquarters in Elk Grove, Ill., operations head Studdert issues a similar order: "Tell them to get to the nearest airport they can."
Before this day, no airline has ordered all of its planes from the sky.
'Where's it going?'
At FAA headquarters, less than a half-mile from the White House and Capitol, Dave Canoles paces before a speakerphone.
The head of air traffic investigations, Canoles has set up phone connections with air traffic facilities. As different regions come on the line, the reports of suspicious planes accumulate. We might be at war by afternoon, Canoles thinks. The FAA had better be ready. Already, some air traffic centers had considered evacuating. Canoles told them to stay put.
Now, about 9:35 a.m., he and others on the conference call listen as an official watching a radarscope tracks the progress of the jet heading for Washington.
Canoles sends an investigator who works for him to an adjoining office with a view to the west. "See if you can spot it," he tells him.
"Six miles from the White House," a voice on the phone says.
Canoles glances outside, through a window facing north. He wonders if he and his co-workers are in danger. At 500 mph, the jet is traveling a mile every seven seconds.
"Five miles from the White House."
No way the FAA is a target, Canoles thinks. It can't be.
"Four miles from the White House."
They'd never choose to hit us. No way.
"The aircraft is circling. It's turning away from the White House."
Where? Where's it going?
Then: "It's gone."
In the adjoining office, the investigator spots smoke to the west of the city.
The jet has hit the Pentagon. The time: 9:38 a.m.
'Order everyone to land'
For the last 30 minutes, since the second Trade Center tower was hit, Sliney has considered bringing every flight down. Now, the manager in charge of the nation's air traffic system is certain.
He has no time to consult with FAA officials in Washington.
The skies are filled with guided missiles, he thinks. Filled with them. The words he cannot shake have proved true. The hijackers did have more planes.
"Order everyone to land! Regardless of destination!" Sliney shouts.
Twenty feet away, his boss, Linda Schuessler, simply nods. She had organized the command center earlier that day, trying to create order from the chaos so Sliney could focus on what had to be done.
"OK, let's get them on the ground!" Sliney booms.
Within seconds, specialists pass the order on to facilities across the country. For the first time in history, the government has ordered every commercial and private plane from the sky.
9:45 a.m.: 3,949 planes
A misunderstanding
In Washington, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey and her deputy, Monte Belger, have been moving back and forth between a secret operations center and their offices.
By Paul Whyte, USA TODAY
FAA Administrator Jane Garvey approved the order to clear the skies.
Throughout the morning, staffers have kept Garvey and Belger apprised of Sliney's decisions.
Now, they tell them of the order to clear the skies. With little discussion, the FAA leaders approve.
Minutes later, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta calls from a bunker beneath the White House, where he has joined Vice President Cheney. Belger explains that the FAA plans to land each plane at the closest airport, regardless of its destination.
Mineta concurs. FAA staffers, following the conversation over the speakerphone with Belger, pump their fists. Then the conversation sours.
Mineta asks exactly what the order means.
Belger says pilots will retain some discretion. All the FAA deputy means is that under long-standing aviation regulations, pilots always have some discretion in the event of an emergency aboard their aircraft. But the secretary assumes the FAA is not being tough enough. "F-- pilot discretion," Mineta says. "Monte, bring down all the planes."
Ready for a fight
Aboard United Flight 890 over the Pacific, Capt. Hosking and another pilot, Doug Price, wait anxiously for news.
A third pilot, "Flash" Blackman, sleeps in the bunkroom in the cockpit of the 747, unaware of what's unfolding.
"Why don't we just let him sleep?" Hosking suggests. Price, set for the next break, agrees.
"I couldn't go to sleep if I wanted to," Hosking says.
The message about the hijackings arrived only minutes ago, but the two already have decided: Hijackers are aboard their flight.
They don't know that for sure. But they decide to believe it, if only to keep the jet safe. For years, they had been instructed to cooperate with hijackers. No longer. This time, they won't give up without a fight, not when they know someone might try to hijack the jet.
Quickly, they wedge their bags between a jump seat and the flimsy cockpit door. The door opens inward and, with the suitcases there, no one can budge it. Not without a lot of effort.
And if someone does manage to get through the cockpit door?
Price will be waiting as Hosking flies the jet. He has the cockpit's hatchet-sized crash ax in hand, along with orders to use it.
"If someone tries to come in that door, I don't want you to hurt him," Hosking says. "Kill him."
Tuesday: Searching for more hijackers
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2002/2002-08-12-clear-skies.htm#more
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
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Fri Aug 16, 6:28 AM ET
Chris Woodyard USA TODAY
Peter Walczak has racked up 120,000 miles flying on US Airways, but during much of the last year he switched to a competitor.
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The car.
The product manager in Lee, N.H., found that short hops by plane didn't make sense when he factored in waiting time and frustration at airports.
''Because of security issues, the hassle factor, anything less than 300 miles became easier to drive,'' Walczak says.
Suddenly, airlines accustomed to tussling with each other over passenger legroom, hot meals and frequent-flier points find themselves losing customers to the open highway. Airlines have cut the number of seats on flights under 200 miles by 15% since a year ago. That compares with an 8% cut in domestic seats overall.
To US Airways, the threat from Chevys, Fords and Toyotas has become as palpable as its losses to Southwest, JetBlue and AirTran. The airline, which has the shortest average flight lengths of any major airline, filed for bankruptcy protection this week.
''One of the great dilemmas we face today is we have so much short-haul flying, and customers still perceive the airport experience as a hassle,'' says US Airways spokesman David Castelveter. ''It's a problem we're trying to reverse.''
While driving is creating headaches in the air, it's opening opportunities on the ground.
Rental car companies are starting to market themselves as airline alternatives. Hotel chains say drive-in customers have been one of the few bright spots in their industry. One luxury bus company now offers airlinelike service -- first-class seats, attendants and fancy meals -- on the 137-mile drive between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. It hopes to replicate the formula on 54 other routes across the country.
Many business travelers have raised their driving-time thresholds. ''I have established my cutoff at five to six hours,'' says consultant Bill Teater of Mount Vernon, Ohio. ''I can not only avoid the (airport) security charade protecting me, but I can get to my destination sooner.''
Three out of four corporate travel managers say they are seeing some employees substitute driving for flying. About 15% say the crossover has been substantial, the Business Travel Coalition found in a survey last spring.
Usually, individuals at a company make the decision to drive. But sometimes entire firms do.
Employees of mortgage lender HomeBanc opening a branch in Charlotte have traveled back and forth to the Atlanta headquarters by car or rented van ''almost exclusively'' -- from the CEO on down, says Vice President Mark Scott.
The trip takes about four hours each way to drive, twice as long as the average flight. But Scott says it works out about even when you include the trip to the airport, waiting in the terminal and transit time upon arrival.
After exhaustive study, glassmaker Pilkington ordered that all trips fewer than 400 miles be driven rather than flown. The company, which has about 900 to 1,000 frequent travelers among six plants around the country, says the savings multiply when groups of employees travel together in a single vehicle.
''It's been a big success as far as cost reduction but not real popular with travelers at first,'' says EJ Hewitt, Pilkington's business travel manager. But because it's the kind of policy that saves jobs in tough times, ''it's received much better now.''
A chance to be alone
Employees can make good use of time on the road. They have uninterrupted time to think. And unlike aboard planes, cellphones can stay on.
''It gives me a chance to be alone and brainstorm,'' says Scott LeBaron, a FedEx manager, about his driving trips between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City or Phoenix.
He keeps a small tape recorder handy to keep track of ideas that he may have along the way.
Driving is cheaper, LeBaron says. He rents a Cadillac DeVille for $35 a day compared with $182 round-trip airfare to Phoenix or Salt Lake City. And he says he would have had to rent a car if he flew to either city anyway.
Tom Payne, an accountant in Springfield, Mo., and a very frequent flier on four airlines, says he drives more than three hours to Kansas City to save hundreds of dollars a trip. He also drives to Tulsa and St. Louis. ''Living in a small-market city, if I do not ordinarily book at least 14 to 21 days in advance, tickets can get expensive,'' Payne says.
A study, however, questions whether driving is always cheaper than flying.
Estimating driving costs at 46 cents a mile in an intermediate-size car, consulting firm Runzheimer International says a 636-mile round trip between Philadelphia and Boston would run $298, or $319 if you throw in on-the-road meals. The same trip by air would cost $296, including three days of airport parking and cab fare into Boston.
Similarly, a Chicago-to-St.-Louis itinerary would be $314 to drive vs. $277 to fly. But Los Angeles to San Francisco is cheaper to drive: $448 by car and $459 by air. None of the comparisons includes the cost of renting a car upon arrival.
Given those kinds of analyses, rental car companies' efforts to expand into the market for city-to-city travel met only limited success over the years. Only now, after airport overcrowding before Sept. 11 and the security shakedowns ever since, are they starting to find some success.
Some are pitching directly to potential fliers. Enterprise Rent-A-Car, for instance, runs ads showing cars flying through the air with the tagline ''A different way to fly.''
A bus company has developed an airline shuttle alternative. ExecConnect America has outfitted luxury buses with 27 first-class leather airline-style seats, instead of the usual 55 seats in a standard bus, for the two-hour, 40-minute run between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Two attendants serve passengers a meal en route on four scheduled round trips a day. The service has attracted only a few passengers on most trips since starting last month, but company officials expect ridership to pick up after a new marketing campaign rolls out.
At $129 for a round trip, it's expensive by bus standards but a fraction of the $614 unrestricted fare that US Airways charges on the commuter route.
CEO Dale Bunce says the idea developed over the past couple years as he saw the potential to transform the image of bus travel into something that could attract professionals and executives who might not have considered it in the past. The key was to create a business environment with room to work.
''These guys get to use this time and arrive with work done and/or ready to go to a meeting,'' he says.
It's that kind of threat that has airlines increasingly concerned.
Delta President Fred Reid cited weakness in revenue from short flights last month as one reason the carrier lost $186 million in the second quarter.
America West's short-haul flying is down 21%, United is off 32%, American 19% and Continental 20%. Those figures include commuter affiliates, whose turboprops often make them better suited for short-distance flying. They have cut their schedules dramatically.
''You have more people driving since Sept. 11,'' says United spokesman Joe Hopkins. ''A guy going from Chicago to Milwaukee, only 90 miles, will say, 'I can drive it in two hours.' ''
US Airways cut its short flights by 18%. Castelveter says the airline has tried hard to let consumers know that airports aren't as much trouble as they believe. ''We've gone to great lengths to explain it doesn't have to be a hassle,'' he says
Both Delta and US Airways are offering a guarantee to shuttle passengers between New York and Washington. Although the fine print carries lots of exceptions, the guarantee allows passengers to collect bonus frequent-flier points or travel-voucher money if they miss their flight despite having checked in 20 minutes beforehand.
A guarantee from Horizon
Horizon Air, the commuter affiliate of Alaska Airlines, vows passengers will move through security lines in five minutes on its Portland-Seattle shuttle or they will receive 1,000 frequent-flier points. The airline is also kicking in a free day of parking near the airport in Seattle. But the percentage of business travelers flying the route, traditionally the biggest revenue-generator in Horizon's system, has slipped 10 percentage points in the past year.
''We can't do anything about the economy, but we can change the perception of those who are starting to drive rather than fly,'' says Dan Russo, a Horizon spokesman. ''There's a chasm between the perception of how long you need to wait and how long it is actually taking, especially if you're in one of our express lines.''
For some business travelers, the decision to drive isn't a choice. Airline schedule cutbacks have made it a necessity.
Bakersfield, an oil and agricultural center about 110 miles north of Los Angeles, has seen its commuter flight schedule slashed from 46 flights to 26 a day since Sept. 11. American Eagle, one of three carriers serving Meadows Field Airport, pulled out completely. The remaining carriers raised fares about $50 round trip.
''Our problem right now is we do not have enough seats,'' says Ray Bishop, Kern County airports director. He noted one passenger who was trying to get to Salt Lake City the next day. Three flights were full, and the fourth was $900 round trip. ''It frustrates us a little bit,'' he says.
Some passengers are combining flying and driving. Mark O'Toole, a consultant in New York, says he flew to Dallas, then drove to Houston recently. Round-trip airfare was $300, compared with the $1,900 he would have paid for a non-stop flight straight to Houston.
Ken Stephenson, a hospital management company executive, has cut his flights in half since Sept. 11 by driving to appointments around Texas.
''There is nothing more gratifying than being able to get in a car and head toward your destination knowing you are in control of the situation as opposed to being told, 'We will update you in 10 minutes,' '' Stephenson says.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=676&e=2&cid=676&u=/usatoday/20020816/ts_usatoday/4367692
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
The Associated Press
8/16/02 1:41 AM
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- A doctor who tried to board an airliner with two guns and other concealed weapons has been fined and sentenced to two years probation.
Dr. Richard D. Price, 47, pleaded guilty in April to a charge that he attempted to board a Delta plane with a concealed weapon. Authorities arrested Price on Oct. 25 after he went through the security checkpoint at Birmingham International Airport, where an X-ray machine showed there was a gun in his luggage.
After the gun was discovered, Price directed officers to a package wrapped like a Christmas gift with a peanut can inside that held a wrapped, loaded .22-caliber gun. He also had a switchblade knife in a shaving kit and an 18-inch sword inside a cane.
Price, a former University of Alabama at Birmingham doctor who was bound for Cincinnati and on to Seattle, told authorities he carried the weapons to protect other passengers.
Price declined comment as he left the courtroom. State misdemeanor charges of carrying a concealed weapon and violating the state firearms law are still pending.
http://www.al.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/newsflash/get_story.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?j0493_BC_AL-BRF--Airport-Weapo&&news&newsflash-al
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Marshals no substitute for armed pilots
AIR MARSHALS are unable to defend America's airlines against terrorists, and the program is becoming a laughingstock, according to current and former marshals interviewed by USA Today. Yet the Bush administration maintains its head-in-the-sand opposition to arming airline pilots.
One of the primary reasons given for not allowing armed pilots is that fighting terrorists should be left to marshals, who are supposed to be highly trained law enforcement and firearms experts. Yet there have been at least two incidents in the past year in which air marshals accidentally discharged their firearms. One marshal left his gun in the plane lavatory.
Marshals interviewed by USA Today said the training has become "like security-guard training for the mall." The very tough marksmanship course once required to become a marshal has been dropped. Three sources, including a manager of the program, told the paper that the marksmanship course was dropped after too many recruits started failing it.
The dress code for marshals is so rigid that it makes them easily identifiable to terrorists, some say. "This is really dangerous," one marshal told the paper. "We are so obvious, the terrorists don't need to bring guns on the planes anymore. They just need to gang up on us and take our guns."
Still worse, marshals are not on every flight, so depending on them to stop terrorists is even more of a risky gamble. The Bush administration should reverse its opposition to armed pilots at once. It's the only way to guarantee that each cockpit is protected by an armed defender.
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_show.html?article=13438
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Critics say there are serious problems with the force guarding airliners
Aug. 15 - T.J. Bonner, head of the National Border Patrol Council, says air marshals have been threatened with firing if they speak out. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.
By Andrea Mitchell
NBC NEWS
WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 - The motto among many after Sept. 11 was: never again. The United States vowed to prevent anyone else from forcibly taking over a commercial jet, putting armed federal air marshals on flights as a significant step. But some members of Congress allege that the plan is an embarrassment waiting to happen.
THE TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT touts the marshals as an elite defense force, trained in special exercises. But lawmakers told NBC News on Thursday that the marshals were not trained as well as they should be.
"What we are hearing now is a pattern of conduct that suggests inherent problems in the program that should be addressed," said Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn.
USA Today reported Thursday that many marshals were overscheduled to the point of falling asleep, some working 16 hours at a stretch. Others have not flown for weeks.
Among the newspaper's other findings:
The program does not have enough ammunition for shooting practice at some of its regional offices.
Although the marshals are supposed to be undercover, their mandatory dress code could identify them to terrorists.
Standards for hiring were lowered, with some new hires put on flights before their background checks were completed.
U.S. DISMISSES REPORT
"This used to be an elite, great group. This used to be the baddest people you could find - war heroes," the newspaper quoted a marshal who joined the program after the terrorist attacks as saying. "Now they've turned this into a laughingstock."
The Transportation Department would not provide officials to be interviewed by NBC News, but it called the allegations "absolute nonsense ... completely inaccurate."
While the number of air marshals is classified, there are reportedly as many as 6,000, up from only 50 before Sept. 11. Attracted by the lure of travel and higher salaries, many came from other law enforcement agencies, such as the U.S. Border Patrol.
The marshals are forbidden by law from unionizing, but complaining that their complaints are being ignored, many are contemplating hiring lawyers, USA Today reported.
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"They've been threatened with their jobs and with prosecution if they speak out to the media or to Congress," T.J. Bonner, head of the National Border Patrol Council, told NBC News.
The marshals are also barred from speaking in public, but NBC News has obtained an e-mail message one of them wrote to Congress. In the message, the marshal writes: "I am somewhat disappointed in how America's first and last line of defense is being overlooked."
But transportation officials said the marshals operated under different rules, much like the military, the FBI and the CIA. The marshals could not expect to punch a time clock, they said, because terrorists do not.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/794768.asp?cp1=1
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Ryan Scott probably should consider himself lucky that he wasn't arrested for trying to carry firearms onto an airplane. True, there were a few extenuating circumstances: Ryan is only 9, and the guns were toys that no one would mistake for actual weapons.
But rules are rules, and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lists "toy weapons" among its "Items Prohibited in Aircraft Cabins." So when Ryan tried to take a rubber, four-inch G.I. Joe rifle and a few miniature toy pistols aboard a flight at the Central Wisconsin Airport earlier this month, he was nabbed.
"It says a toy gun, and that's a toy gun," a spokeswoman for the company the TSA pays to screen passengers at the airport told the Wausau Daily Herald. After Ryan's family complained, the airport's director of operations saved the toys from destruction. "I personally think it's foolish," he said, "but that's how (the rule is) being interpreted."
A TSA spokesman said he had not heard about the incident, but "it may be that we had an overzealous screener that wanted to follow the letter of the rule." In other words, the problem is stupid screeners, not a stupid rule.
If so, the stupidity seems to be rampant, which is something the TSA might want to consider when it writes its rules. Around the same time that Ryan Scott's toys were taken away, screeners at the Los Angeles International Airport told a British tourist, Judy Powell, she could not take an armed G.I. Joe doll on her plane.
The doll, which Powell had bought in Las Vegas, was carrying the same sort of little rifle that got Ryan into trouble. Eventually, she was allowed to pack the doll in a checked suitcase -- without the rifle. That edict presumably was improvised, since TSA regulations allow passengers to transport real guns in checked luggage, "so long as they are unloaded and declared to the airline at the ticket counter."
Powell told the BBC that "security examined the toy as if it was going to shoot them and looked at the rifle. I was really angry to start with because of the absurdity of the situation. But then I saw the funny side of it and thought this was simple lunacy."
Not everyone agrees. Unlike the Central Wisconsin Airport, where a sensible official intervened to rescue Ryan's toys, LAX seems to be run by the sort of "overzealous" people who take TSA regulations at face value. "We have instructions to confiscate anything that looks like a weapon or a replica," an LAX spokesman said. "If G.I. Joe was carrying a replica, then it had to be taken from him." It's not clear whether Joe put up a fight.
Surely these are isolated incidents, just like last month's arrest of a competitive boomerang thrower who tried to board a plane in Connecticut with her sports equipment. Boomerangs are not explicitly banned from aircraft cabins, but the TSA emphasizes that its list "is not all-inclusive": "Other items that may be deemed to present a potential threat may also be prohibited."
No doubt it was also an aberration when a woman at JFK was forced to drink from three bottles of her own breast milk to show that the contents did not "represent a potential threat." But once you see enough isolated incidents (and we have to assume that many cases do not get reported in the press), you start to see a pattern.
You might think that security screeners who are vigilant enough to intercept tiny toy guns would be highly effective at spotting real weapons. Yet as of June, screeners were still missing one in four dummy guns, bombs and knives in government tests. Historically, these tests have practically been designed to be passed.
By casting its net too widely, the TSA is making it harder for screeners, overzealous or not, to zero in on genuine threats. Now that the old model for responding to hijackers, based on the assumption that cooperation was the safest course, has been abandoned, terrorists will never again be able to take over airplanes armed with box cutters, let alone with scissors, pliers, wrenches, corkscrews, golf clubs, hockey sticks or pool cues, to pick some of the sillier items on the TSA's list.
We may, along with the woman whose G.I. Joe was disarmed, "see the funny side of it." But airline security shouldn't be a joke.
Contact Jacob Sullum | Read his biography
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jacobsullum/js20020816.shtml
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878