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...More Stories Special Issue: Day of Infamy How to Beat Bin Laden TIME/CNN Poll: America Is In a Military Mood The Day the FAA Stopped the World Update: Finding a Way to Go On Back to Business? TIME FOR KIDS...
...tens of thousands of flights a day. The system is almost dull in its routine. Controllers and pilots use regular routes, fly prescribed altitudes along decades-old highways in the sky, and most important, are in constant contact. Controllers are like flashlights in the dark for commercial airplanes: those FAA employees know what's going on in the air around a plane, and can 'see' exactly what each plane is doing. Each plane appears on a controllers radar screen as a so-called 'target' in controller-speak, and each blip representing a plane on that all-important radar is accompanied...
...FAA's national command center in Herndon, Virginia, some 30 miles from Washington, the usually predictable patterns on the small, 21 inch screens, as well as the huge 10 foot screen that display the nation's air traffic control system in action would have started to go awry. By several minutes after nine, the two airline representatives that sit alongside their FAA colleagues at the Center would have heard about the terrible call that dispatchers at the American Airlines operation center near Dallas Ft Worth airport had fielded: a flight attendant on board flight 11 had called the center...
...With conflicting reports coming in, and controllers attempting to track 'invisible' airplanes, the news of the planes hitting the World Trade Center rocked the FAA headquarters. FAA Administrator Garvey, most likely in full consultation with Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta, decided to implement a 'ground stop' on New York City airports. Although the FAA doesn't technically close an individual airport, a ground stop prevents any plane, commercial or private, from taking off from that airport and can require incoming flights diverted. When reports that a plane or planes might be headed towards Washington, the FAA HQ on Independence Avenue...
...down as soon as reasonable. The order, which has never been implemented since flying was invented in 1903, applied to virtually every single kind of machine that can takeoff - civilian, military, or law enforcement. The Herndon command center coordinated the phone call to all major FAA sites, the airline reps in the room contacted all airlines, and so-called NOTAMS -notices to airmen - were also sent out. The FAA had stopped the world...