According to the following source,

the New York Times of Sept 13 said much the same thing,

Re: transponder/radio contact

And what do the fighter planes typically do?

So first off, the emergency begins when the plane begins to go off-course at 8:15.

Thirteen minutes after a commercial airline goes way off-course, eight minutes after radar/transponder contact is lost, and it takes ATC ten more minutes to contact NORAD and tell them the plane has been hijacked?

An off-course/no contact airliner is a standing emergency. A possible hijacking is only the most logical of scenarios to consider.

It is not necessary for ATC to wait until a hijacking is confirmed, in order to contact NORAD or an ANG base.

Whether or not partial contact is regained, whether or not those intercepts actually get in the air, (or are called-off) the ATC/FAA should have at least notified civilian air defence immediately... as if

Whether ATC tried to contact local ANG bases, (Air National Guard) or not, we do not know; whether NORAD was contacted earlier and simply did not respond, is still a possibility. Practically everything about these issues is being kept secret by the FBI and other agencies. The critical evidence we do know is that NORAD was (supposedly) not informed until twenty-three minutes after the emergency existed, and ten minutes after a hijacking had been confirmed.

This is serious negligence, no?

Occuring on the same day as the even more-negligent monitoring of Flight 77, (Part 1A) this has to raise serious doubts in the minds of readers -as to what else was going on... that day... besides the hijackings, that may have allowed them to occur, and what needs to be done on the level of civilian defense, (not secret service enhancements) to make sure this doesn't happen again.

We need an open, thorough, public investigation.

And there's still more.

When NORAD was (apparently) contacted, it took them another six minutes to contact an air base.

Why would it take six minutes for NORAD to get the hijack-confirmation, choose an appropriate air base, make a phone call -and for that to be translated into an order to scramble?

One, two, three minutes, maybe; but six?

Now we’re up to twenty-nine minutes -between the time when officials first lost contact with Flight 11, and when the order to get jets in the air was given.

This is absurd; and, as we have documented an even greater degree of negligence in the case of Flight 77, (Part 1A) we can thus see that this was no "fluke," no "isolated accident," no infrequent "bad day at the office."

We don’t yet know where the exact disconnect point is, (ATC? FAA? NORAD?) but we can clearly see a repeated, glaring gap in credible response time.

By 8:38 Flight 11 was already nearing the outskirts of New York City, eight minutes away from its target.

Now notice what Air Base NORAD chooses to scramble fighters from: Otis Air Force Base, on the eastern-most tip of Massachusetts, (Cape Cod, on the Atlantic coast).

This is about two-hundred miles away from where Flight 11 was.

Wouldn’t it have made sense to order jets to scramble from a closer base?

As it was, it was already too late for Flight 11.

It struck the WTC at 8:46am, (CNN, April 16, ibid). The intercept planes would not be in the air for another six minutes.

It had taken civilain air defense thirty-seven minutes to get fighter-intercepts into the air, from the first point of an emergency.

It would take those jets another seventeen minutes to get to New York City.

Why wouldn’t NORAD order other planes from other bases to scramble, as well? -far closer to the hijacked plane(s)?

The significance of this non-order becomes huge, when we consider that it came one minute after NORAD was informed that Flight 175 had also been hijacked, (8:43/44). (CNN, Sept 16, ibid)

In the space of five minutes, officials at NORAD were made aware that two planes had been hijacked, and were presently within about fifty miles from one another, (just outside New York).

We are not told how or why ATC/FAA officials knew that Flight 175 was hijacked; but based on the record of Flights 77 and 11, it may be safe for us to assume that there was another glaring delay -between the time when trouble was first observed, and when NORAD was first notified.

Now, NORAD would also be among the first to know that Flight 11 had struck a building, (at 8:46, ibid).

Was this not an extreme emergency?

By this time, Flight 175 was thirty-one minutes into its doomed forty-eight minute flight-path. This would place it approximately half-way between Albany and New York City, (50 miles north of NYC) two-hundred miles from Otis Air Force Base, and heading in the opposite direction, (towards Baltimore).

It would have only made the most elementary sense for NORAD, (or ATC) to order other jets scrambled, from other bases closer to the plane -and in a position to intercept it.

Outside Philadelphia, for example, at Willow Grove Air Reserve Station, is 111 Fighter wing, whose "Mission Statement" is,

A "battle-ready" squadron of F-16’s were also stationed with the 177 Fighter Wing out of Atlantic City, less than half the distance from New York City, compared to Otis AFB.

Such bases, of course, are not only restricted to defending the air-space within their own state line.

Now, it is true that escorts/intercepts are usually scrambled from NORAD bases, such as the Otis Air Force Base near Cape Cod, Massachusetts, or the air base at Langley, Virginia; but this not always the case:

We are told by military officials that,

If we take this "official" speed, (just under 10 miles/minute) and calculate the distance, (approx. 190 miles, calculated from online Yahoo maps) it would have taken the planes from Otis about twenty minutes to reach Flight 175’s last known position; and judging from Flight 175’s last known speed and direction, (precise speed unknown, let's say 300 mph) in twenty minutes the airliner would still be another one hundred miles away.

So we can see that it would take about thirty minutes for the Otis fighters to reach Flight 175.

If, on the other hand, NORAD ordered jets to scramble from outside Philadelphia, (at say, 8:50, and even allowing for the eight minutes it took the Otis fighters to get into the air) those jets could be expected to make visual contact with Flight 175 in approximately thirteen minutes.

If Atlantic City had been chosen, two planes could have scrambled and flown the less than one-hundred miles (to intercept) in less than twenty minutes.

Neither of these bases received an order to scramble.

Again, we see the same pattern as in the case of Flight 77, (Part 1A); in both cases: significant, then incredible FAA delays in notifying NORAD, and NORAD choosing bases which are far away.

This picture is further complicated by the fact that, according to the Federation of American Scientists,

If we calculate the distance between OTIS and NYC, (about 190 miles, see note 14) and the time it took the planes to get there, they flew about twelve miles per minute, or 720 mph: less than half their top speed, hardly what we'd expect.

In total then, it took civilain air defence, (on Sept. 11, 2001) fifty-five minutes to get two fighters to an interception point, (NYC, ten minutes flight-time away) after the initial airline emergency had commenced.

The "state" mission of 174 Fighter Wing, for example, is as follows:

[NOTE: This author is not suggesting that all of these bases had jets on "strip alert," ready-to-go; yet, as we discuss the "official" explanations for the Air Force delay/absence in some detail in Part 1E, it seems rather incredible to suggest that none of the numerous bases with "battle-ready" fighter squadrons had any jets ready, nor that there weren't already a few jets in the air, on routine training missions, when the emergencies began].

As most American citizens know very well, the primary, stated purpose of the Air National Guard is civil defence.

For some reason, even though this was the most extreme of civil emergencies, no other jets were scrambled on Sept 11 -besides those under the direct control of NORAD, (Otis and Langley, as we shall see).

All the other National Guard bases were left un-activated.

Even given the outrageous twenty-nine minute delay in responding to Flight 11, (which irrevocably doomed it to its’ fate) jets still should have been scrambled from Westfield, MA., Hartford CT., Philadelphia, or Atlantic City; and they would have then been in the air in time to intercept Flight 175.

As it was, Flight 175 made a sharp turn south, (towards Atlantic City) which would have brought it into closer range with both 111, and 177 Fighter Wings.

IF NORAD had acted decisively -even after the first confirmed attack on the World Trade Centre- there still would have been a chance to avert the second attack, but the needed order to scramble additional jets never came.

Thus it was colossal incompetence/negligence, (and perhaps something more) which allowed two hijacked planes to crash into the World trade Center towers -as had also been the case, (only moreso) for Flight 77, (see Part 1A).

Thousands of American citizens would not have lost their lives if ATC, FAA, NORAD, and/or Pentagon officials had done their jobs, (though again, we don’t yet know exactly whom, and to what degree).

The same pattern of incompetence remains:

Was Boston ATC in charge of both flights?

Who was responsible for the ensuing decisions made at NORAD?

By the close proximity of attack-times between the two planes, and the outrageously long response-time/ineptitude of ATC/FAA and/or NORAD, two cargoes of innocents were condemned to an infamous fate.

In this, let us be perfectly clear: the source of our outrage is not for vengeance against those who may have unconsciously donned the uniform of criminal negligence on Sept 11; for, even when thousands of lives are lost, the heart of a nation can be very large. We may yet choose to understand that, in the midst of a crisis, some people in positions of high authority may have "lost their heads," "missed their cue" -when their skills and training were most needed.

What we cannot countenance, however, is being lied to; and so long as the government utterly refuses to acknowledge the criminal negligence that the available documentation clearly implies, then the possiblity that there are very good and reasonable explanations for the security failure on Sept 11th remains on very thin ground indeed.

The general timeline for the final voyage of Flight 93 is as follows:

Also, recall from the earlier reports, (cited above) that F-16/15 Fighters were scrambled from both, Langley AFB and Andrews AFB, for protection over Washington, D.C.

When Flight 93 crashed east of Pittsburgh, it was approximately 150 miles away from Washington, (approximately twenty minutes away, by airliner, at 400 mph, or fourteen minutes away, by super-sonic jet).

The FAA had ordered all commercial planes to be grounded at 9:25.

There were very few planes left in the sky. There would have been virtually no other planes on radar that could have threatened Washington, D.C., (even without the extra fighters in the air) -that is, besides the hijacked plane which had reversed course and was barreling towards Washington at a ferocious speed.

If the main priority of those jets was to protect Washington, why were some of them not sent to intercept flight 93? even at 9:50? -well before the crash, some sixteen minutes later?

If there were no fighters in the vicinity of Flight 93 when it crashed, there bloody-well should have been.

Apparently some of these planes were eventually ordered to intercept; but we have not been told when, and how close they were; and again, they appeared to arrive upon the scene about ten minutes after the plane had crashed -in a now familiar pattern.

If we subtract the 70 miles from the 188, that leaves about 118 miles that the F-15's travelled in ten minutes. That's about twelve miles per minute, or 720 mph.