Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that trying to show that "Do the orders still stand" didn't AUTOMATICALLY MEAN THAT THEY STOOD THE FIGHTERS DOWN.
I forgot that if it goes against your beliefs then it's completely irrelevant and stupid to post it.
WASHINGTON – U.S. civil aviation authorities failed to warn the military that a Cessna plane had been stolen until it had already been crashed into a Tampa, Fla., bank building after buzzing a military airbase, officials said Monday.
Instead, the North American Aerospace Defense Command heard about the crash on Federal Aviation Administration radio traffic and scrambled fighter planes near distant Miami to fly protective missions over the Tampa area, NORAD spokesman Maj. Barry Venable told United Press International Monday.
By that time, the Cessna, piloted by a 15-year-old boy on an apparent suicide mission, had buzzed MacDill Air Force Base, home to U.S. Central Command and Gen. Tommy Franks, who is running the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Student pilot Charles Bishop stole the Cessna from St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport, where he was preparing for a flying lesson at 4:50 p.m., and flew about 14 minutes before hitting the building, National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Paul Schlamm said. His flight path included about a minute of flying over MacDill‘s airfield at an altitude of about 100 feet, news reports said.
Schlamm said the NTSB was still putting together an accurate timeline.
It is already clear that NORAD, which has responsibility for protecting the United States from air attack, did not know about the incident until 5:13 p.m., nearly 10 minutes after the crash. At 5:16, NORAD‘s southeast air defense sector branch alerted fighters at Homestead Air Reserve Base, about 270 miles away from Tampa. They took off at 5:21 and established a "combat air patrol" over Tampa by 5:45, Venable said. The CAP ended about 30 minutes later.
"We didn‘t know about it until after it had crashed," Venable told UPI. Schlamm said the plane hit the Bank of America building around 5:04 p.m. One detail that remains unclear is how soon after Bishop took off did St. Petersburg airport notify the FAA of the problem. FAA spokesman Les Dorr said he does not yet have an accurate timeline.