Post S11 tourism push.

Matthew X profrv at nex.net.au
Thu May 6 12:51:02 PDT 1999


Fingerprint matching to start 9/11
Starting Sept. 11, hundreds of foreign visitors will be fingerprinted and 
photographed by immigration inspectors
http://www.fcw.com/
For air traffic controllers, a historic achievement
BY Alan Levin, USA Today
Aug. 13, 2002   Printing? Use this version.
Email this to a friend.
On a typical summer day, a thunderstorm somewhere sends air traffic 
controllers scrambling. Even a small storm can disrupt the meticulous 
choreography of flights from coast to coast.
Now, imagine violent weather blanketing the entire country. That, in a 
nutshell, is what the U.S. aviation system faced on Sept. 11 after 
officials ordered all planes to land.
Never before had the air traffic system responded to so many problems 
occurring simultaneously. For individual air traffic controllers, the work 
was chaotic and intense but straightforward: Pick a new route for each 
flight. Radio instructions to turn. Hold traffic to keep airways from 
overcrowding.
But collectively, landing nearly 4,500 planes was a massive undertaking and 
a historic achievement. It required intense cooperation, swift 
decision-making and the unflinching work of thousands of people. Across the 
nation, controllers searched for alternate airports to land large jets even 
as their traumatized colleagues streamed back from break rooms after 
watching the attacks on TV.
A bit of luck helped, too. The weather across the country was excellent: 
There were few actual storms to deal with. The attacks occurred before most 
of the first wave of flights took off on the West Coast. By late afternoon, 
there would have been as many as 7,500 aircraft aloft.
Yet everyone agrees the system, criticized for years for flight delays and 
computer problems, performed admirably on Sept. 11.
On a normal day, about 20 aircraft each hour are rerouted to new 
destinations because of emergencies or bad weather. On Sept. 11, 
controllers rerouted more than 1,100 flights in the first 15 minutes after 
the order to land the fleet was issued at 9:45 a.m. — more than one every 
second.
In all, about 3,300 commercial and 1,200 private planes were ordered to 
land by U.S. and Canadian authorities that day. Almost 75% of those planes 
landed within just 60 minutes of the 9:45 order. Canadian controllers and 
airport managers cleared space in small airports north of the U.S. border 
for 252 jets arriving from Europe and Asia.
During the morning, each part of the nation required its own battle plan:
·       New York air traffic officials shut down hundreds of miles of 
airspace almost immediately after the second hijacked jet struck the World 
Trade Center at 9:03 a.m.
·       In several air traffic facilities — including Boston, where two of 
the hijacked jets had taken off — controllers feared their own lives were 
in danger and evacuated.





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