Fighter Pilots talking about intercepting planes during 9-11

[Skyviper]

Hey I found more videos of Jetstream and during the opening five minutes there are some fighter pilots telling their accounts of being scrambled to intercept airliners during 9-11. I figured some of you may be interested to hear those accounts.

 

Keep in mind it's the first five minutes that may interest you ... but I'm assuming the other 40 minutes may interest you as well too. Students learning how to intercept bogies.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecWzu2zdRbQ

[+Typhoid]

yea.  I remember all too well.  I was in NORAD J3 then and recalled to The Mountain later. 

 

rough times

[+1977Frenchie]

Even in Canada, there was some stressfull events. My father in law was in an helicopter going back from northern Québec and he received the order to go down.. it went like :

 

Flight Controller : Helo inbound at 275, 35 miles you are instructed to land now.

Helo : Will be in airport in 10 minutes.

Flight Controller : Negative helo, you land NOW.

Helo, Negative, all trees here, can't make it.

Flight Controller : You either land by yourself in the next seconds, or a CF-18 will make you land.

Helo : Copy that, found a place to land.

 

He stayed there for 2 hours before giving permission to take off and make it to town...

 

He learned later what happened and why he had to land right away...

[Skyviper]

Wow. I heard that day Air Traffic Controllers did a great job doing the impossible getting planes to land in the amount of time they did.

[+Typhoid]

Wow. I heard that day Air Traffic Controllers did a great job doing the impossible getting planes to land in the amount of time they did.

 

It was a monumental accomplishment.  NORAD has a standard plan for the emergency control of all air traffic in North America.  we always practiced in during exercises and never thought it would ever be done short of a nuclear war threat.  On that day, two Canadian AF officers executed the plan and grounded everything in North America in very short order. 

 

And every tactical fighter squadron in both countries checked in with armed aircraft available for assignment.  All in very short order. 

 

The work the ATC systems did in both countries is one of those unsung hero accomplishments.  Thousands of aircraft on the ground in short order and in Canada, especially, all of the air traffic headed for the US was put into Canadian airports and thousands of passengers put up by the local population. 

 

That we are the closest of allies was demonstrated that day beyond any measure. 

[KJakker]

People might find this video interesting as well. 

 

[Skyviper]

That is the most chilling thing I've ever heard.

 

And like Tyhpoid said no expected this to be real. All the people asking if this is Real World even one person said never had so much "real world" stuff in an exercise. The one lady even seemed to take this as an exercise.