Word: faa
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Back at the FAA, workers were filing into the building, and reports were flooding in. Contacting experienced aviation sources did nothing to clear up the chaos. And there were no explicit reports from the airplanes themselves that they had been hijacked. (The system has certain codes that are a simple roll of the dial in a cockpit - a pilot would merely enter a 4 digit emergency code; and there is a specific one for a hijacking). Things were moving rapidly, and at 10:21, Garvey ordered the diversion of all international flights to the U.S. The FAA called NavCanada...
...Five minutes later, FAA's few staffers who had stayed to set up the emergency operations center accomplished their mission and the center was up and running by 9:30. FAA chief spokesman Scott Brenner gave immediate orders to his press corps: hit the vending machines on the floors below and bring back all the candy you could carry. Throughout the day, a hard-core group of public affairs staffers grabbed slices of pizza, scarfed chocolate donuts and swigged water and coffee. But cellphones were virtually unusable because of the overloads, and FAA staffers in the emergency op center couldn...
...While confusing and conflicting information continued to pour into the FAA op center, news came that Canada had apparently shut down its own system. At 10:42, worse news: there was another crash - this of flight 93 into a Pennsylvania field. Confusion reached such a high level that the FAA admitted to the White House officials who wanted to bring the President back to Washington that the agency could not account for seven planes. In fact, four of those planes turned out to be the downed ones - but that would take a while to sort out. Even more worrying...
...International flights, which were clearly getting low on fuel, apparently started dialing their transponders to indicate to Canadian controllers that there were emergencies on board. Some apparently even dialed in the 'hijack' code, and for a few frantic minutes the airspace near Alaska was peppered with "hijacked" planes. The FAA immediately called NavCanda and asked what was happening. The Canadians opened the system back up, but implemented rigid security procedures including keeping passengers on aircraft for hours...
...tragic day creeped toward noon, and it seemed the attacks had slowed if not ceased, the FAA didn't pause. Garvey and her top deputies were on the phone constantly, gathering information from FAA facilities, fielding calls from members of Congress (who were probably merely meddling, not actually being helpful), and discussing possible options with aviation experts, as well as hosting a series of conference calls with the airlines. Although those calls, which also included officials from the Department of Transportation, began with just the major airlines of the ATA participating, as the afternoon wore on, Garvey started to bring...