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Home / Complete 9/11 Timeline / Before 9:54 a.m. September 11, 2001: NORAD Is Told It Does Not Have to Provide a Fighter Escort for Air Force One

Before 9:54 a.m. September 11, 2001: NORAD Is Told It Does Not Have to Provide a Fighter Escort for Air Force One

Entity Tags: Continental US NORAD Region, Larry Arnold
Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events

NORAD’s Continental United States Region (CONR) is told it will not need to provide fighter jets to escort Air Force One when the plane takes off from Sarasota, Florida. [National Guard Bureau, 11/19/2001] While President Bush is visiting the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota (see (8:55 a.m.) September 11, 2001), Air Force One is on the ground at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport. [Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2004 pdf file; US Air Force, 2/29/2012 pdf file] Major General Larry Arnold, the CONR commander, will later recall that around this time, CONR “knew that the president was down in Florida” but it “didn’t know what he was going to do.” “Eventually,” he will say, “we asked the question: If he takes off, do we need to escort?” Arnold will not state who CONR, which is based at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, asks this question to. But the person or agency says no. CONR will only be asked to provide fighters to escort Air Force One after 9:54 a.m., when the plane takes off from Sarasota (see 9:54 a.m. September 11, 2001). “[T]he airplane took off and we got immediate word that the Secret Service had asked us to escort [it],” Arnold will recall. [National Guard Bureau, 11/19/2001] He will say that CONR “received tasking from the Secret Service through the Joint [Chiefs of] Staff and NORAD to follow the president and protect him.” [Code One Magazine, 1/2002] In Florida, NORAD has two fighters on alert at Homestead Air Reserve Base and two fighters on alert at Tyndall Air Force Base. [Airman, 12/1999; St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/2004] However, its Southeast Air Defense Sector (SEADS) will scramble fighters from Ellington Field in Texas to escort Air Force One (see (After 9:56 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Your Houston News, 9/19/2001; Rosenfeld and Gross, 2007, pp. 40] Furthermore, these fighters will only reach Air Force One at around 11:29 a.m., more than 90 minutes after the plane takes off (see (11:29 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [USA Today, 9/11/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/2004]