Flying out of Atlanta on September 11, 2001 - While planes were supposed to be grounded
by
Margie Burns, January 15th, 2006
After more than four years, most Americans still do not know that a commercial airplane flew out of Atlanta on September 11, 2001, departing through closed air space while commercial aircraft were grounded nationwide. The jet was South African Airways flight 210, bound presumably for Johannesburg by way of Capetown, South Africa, carrying a Saudi national, age 43. According to Craig Unger, author of the nonfiction bestseller
House of Bush, House of Saud, the flight was scheduled to leave at 10:30 a.m. This is rather an arresting timeline. That Tuesday morning, American Airlines 11 had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. CNN aired footage two minutes later. United Airlines 175 struck the WTC South Tower, watched live on television by millions of people, at 9:03 a.m. At 9:15, American Airlines forbade new takeoffs. United Airlines did likewise a few minutes later. At 9:26, the FAA ordered a national ground stop forbidding takeoffs and requiring planes in the air to get down as soon as feasible. The order applied to civilian, military, and law enforcement aircraft. At 9:30, AA and UA ordered all their planes to land immediately. At 9:37, AA 77 hit the Pentagon. Shortly after 10:00, UA 93 crashed into the ground in Pennsylvania, brought down by passenger actions. At this point the FAA, NORAD, all airlines and airports, the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, Congress, and the White House had been alerted. Fighter jets had been scrambled.If South African Airways flight 210 was on time, it flew out of the huge but idled Atlanta airport one minute before the FAA allowed military and law enforcement flights to resume, along with some flights that the FAA cannot reveal that were already airborne, according to
Time magazine.Was SA 210 among the flights that the FAA could not reveal? South African Airways had been code sharing with American Airlines, which had already grounded all its planes, since 1992. Coming out of Atlanta, it code shares with Delta, which was also grounded. The White House, which initially denied the Saudi flights, has not commented on this flight. These documents were obtained through a FOIA request by the conservative organization Judicial Watch, which submitted them to the independent 911 Commission on June 2, 2004, pointing out that the documents represent the first admission by the government that the flights occurred at all. According to the group, the documents were turned over by the Customs and Border Protection agency in the Office of Homeland Security, while six other government agencies disregarded the FOIA request. No wonder George W. Bush has started turning up the heat on the border patrol. As Unger wrote in a June 2004 New York Times op-ed, the 911 Commission investigated only the departure of 142 Saudis on special charter flights. It never investigated and perhaps was not informed about the 161 Saudis leaving on these domestic and foreign commercial flights from September 11 to September 15, 2001, even though the same questions pertain to these flights as to the others.In fact, the commercial flights raise extra questions. Chartering a plane, after all, is arguably a transparent process to the extent that you throw money at the dilemma and jet out of the country. But how could so many Saudi nationals get ready access to commercial flights leaving the U.S., at such a time, on regular aircraft? ........
HOW indeed?????????????
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