As part of 9/11 week USA TV has been airing various movie/documentaries about the disaster.
Most of them which have been shown several times before relate to the actual hi-jackings on the various aircraft and the personal aspects.
Last night Discovery aired a program which I saw for the first time ( but may have been aired before!) relating to the events by ATC after the initial impact. It was "The day the FAA grounded all aircraft"
I was a fascination program with all the ATC problems that I am sure most people were not aware of.
Required viewing for HD and his mates !
After the first Twin towers impacts the FAA issued an "ATC ground zero decree" command initially for New York area and then for the whole of the USA. This is basically to get all aircraft out of their airspace or on the ground asap.
The point was made that there was no manuals for thi, so no procedures, which of course was the first time one had ever been issued.
There were points that, for example Canada was totally unprepared and under manned for this operation. But they had developed an emergency procedure for the Y2K senario and decide that would work which it did.
We all saw the photos of the ground in Gander and Halifax but I did not appreciate that many of these aircraft were overweight for landing in Canada ( Having planned for US West Coast) so they were having but be vectored to a dumping area before landing etc etc !
They also highlighted the fact that inbounds on Oceanic control were only on HF and that commands could take 10-15 minutes to relay to an aircraft ( and there were dozens of them
)
Even in the US which didn't get the coverage that Canada had, provincial airports that normally had 3-4 GA flights a day took dozens of airliners full of passengers in.
The statistics are amazing.
But the final point was also interesting !
The FAA had a committe to look into formulating a written procedure in case this ever happened again.
Their verdict was that it was only the individual controllers using their discrection and knowledge that sorted it all out and that a written procedure would only get in the way
Worth a watch IMHO