9:49 a.m. September 11, 2001: FAA Headquarters Continues to Delay Decision on Contacting NORAD About Flight 93

According to the 9/11 Commission, the FAA Command Center has just twice warned FAA headquarters that United 93 is now “29 minutes out of Washington, DC.” Someone at headquarters says to someone at the Command Center, “they’re pulling Jeff [last name unknown] away to go talk about United 93.” Command Center replies, “Uh, do we want to think about, uh, scrambling aircraft [NORAD fighters]?” FAA headquarters replies, “Uh, God, I don’t know.” Command Center says, “Uh, that’s a decision somebody’s gonna have to make probably, in the next ten minutes.” FAA headquarters answers, “Uh, ya know, everybody just left the room.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] This is 13 minutes since Cleveland flight control had asked the Command Center in vain to contact NORAD about Flight 93 (see (9:36 a.m.) September 11, 2001). Apparently there is only one person at FAA headquarters who is authorized to request military assistance. Ben Sliney, the FAA’s national operations manager at its Herndon Command Center, is told that no one can find them. He later recounts, “I said something like that’s incredible. There’s only one person. There must be someone designated or someone who will assume the responsibility of issuing an order, you know. We were becoming frustrated in our attempts to get some information. What was the military response?” [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 9/10/2006] This contrasts with the FAA’s earlier response to Flight 11, where Boston flight controllers had contacted NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector themselves (see (8:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001), and had even directly called military bases (see 8:34 a.m. September 11, 2001) (see (8:34 a.m.) September 11, 2001).