posted on Oct, 1 2003 @ 05:18 PM
Good questions, Silk, and Illa nswer them as best as possible, with what knowldge I have.
When a fighter intercepts a plane, he doesnt automatically fire on it, theres a set of steps they go through. The first one is that the fighter jet
will try and establish radio contact with the pilot of the target plane. No contact, then the jet will rock his wings to catch the pilots attention.
The fighter makes sure he can establish visual contact with the pilot he is pursuing. If that doesnt get thier attention, he fires tracers in the
flight path of the plane. No response then, its time to shoot it down.
Shooting down a plane doesnt automatically destroy it, you can down a jet without blowing it to pieces if you take out the engines. during this time,
during the whole interception process, lets say they had regained control from the hijackers. The pilot on flight 93 would have seen the fighter jet,
and made sure to let the fighter know that the plane was back under friendly control, dont shoot, please help me find a safe place to land.
of course, this is all pure speculation drawn from information of the day and normal FAA proceedures. We will probably never know what happened truly,
but flight 93 was very suspicous, For one, a 911 call made by one of the passengers was seized by the FBI and the dispatchers were told to shut up
about it. the black box was "too damaged" to get info from, and the cockpit recorder, oit was a year before they let the families listen to it. Very
suspicous.
Anyway, it is worthy to note that scrambling jets to intercept planes is actually more common than you think. In 2001, before sep 11, there were 67
times the airforce was scrambled. they scramble jets anytime there is an emergency or suspected emergency. A loss of transponder signal, moving more
than 15 miles off the flight path, loss of radio contact, these are all emercencies in which fighters are scrambled. And they dont get shot down
either. As I lisdted above, the fighter jet:
1. Attempts to establish radio contact with the target plane, in case the ground to air radio isnt working, this si done to try to contact the pilot.
2. If no contact is established, the fighter rocks the wings and the pilot, if hes still alive, rocks his back to aknowldge yes, I see you, Im alive.
It is here interceptions usually end, because it measn the radios went out, the pilot cant get them back online, but the jet is still ok, it is here,
the figher will escort the jet someplace safe to land.
3. If the above steps fail, tracers are fired in the flight path to get attention. This usually means the plane has been hijacked. The tracer rounds
being fired ois also a scare tactic to freak the hijackers out and let them know, you can land in one piece, or we are armed and can land you the hard
way.
4. if the pilot of the hijacked craft is still gung ho, thats when you down the sucker with a missile or cannon fire.
Thus, while your points are very valid, the mental state of the passengers and everything, it is unlikely that if, the passenger pilot of flight 93
had regained control, he would be fully aware of the presence of the fighter jet, and as a pilot, he would have known exactly how to respond and what
to do.
Again, all speculatyion, but speculation can bring interesting insights.