Analysis from a JHU CS Prof

Thu Sep 13 18:07:32 UTC 2001

At 06:05 PM 9/12/2001, you wrote:

>Quite more interesting is why nobody noticed that 4 airliners where hijacked
>almost the same time.

Not surprising.  Aircraft are "flight followed" by a series of control 
centers across the nation, each responsible for a given chunk of 
airspace.  Something happening in an area controlled by Center "A", for 
example, wouldn't be passed on to Center "B" (which has it's own problems 
to work) unless it impacted Center "B".  Furthermore, unless someone TELLS 
Center they're being hijacked, there's no way for a controller - looking at 
a blip - to know what's up.  And any controller can tell you that pilots do 
some strange things sometimes; that radios fail, that airline operations 
tell planes to change destinations and the controllers aren't told, etc.

In these cases, most of the knowledge that a plane was hijacked came from 
passengers on phones, not the cockpits. And even if it was known 
immediately that these planes were being hijacked - what could anyone on 
the ground do?

Dean Robb
www.PC-Easy-va.com
On-site computer services
Member, ICANN At Large