Template:Early Morning September 11, 2001: Langley Pilot Asks to Be Taken off Alert Later On

Early Morning September 11, 2001: Langley Pilot Asks to Be Taken off Alert Later On
At Langley Air Force Base, one of the pilots that will take off to defend Washington in response to the terrorist attacks asks to be removed from “alert” status later this morning, so he and another pilot can participate in a training mission. Being on “alert” means that a pilot’s fighter jet is kept on the runway, armed, fueled up, and ready to take off within minutes if called upon.

The pilot, Major Dean Eckmann, calls NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector and requests that he be removed from alert status at 11:00 a.m. He wants to be able to join in with a scheduled training mission being conducted from Langley Air Force Base, along with another pilot from his unit, Captain Craig Borgstrom. (Borgstrom is not one of the unit’s alert pilots, but will take off along with Eckmann in response to the terrorist attacks.) According to author Lynn Spencer, such requests for removal from alert status—known as “download”—are customary, “since the detachment typically flies two training missions each week, and as long as the other NORAD alert sites on the East Coast—at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod and Homestead Air Reserve Base in Florida—are up on alert, the requests are generally approved.”

The alert unit at Langley Air Force Base is in fact part of the North Dakota Air National Guard’s 119th Fighter Wing, which has a small detachment at Langley, located away from the base’s central facilities. The unit is housed in two cramped buildings, and has just four aircraft and 18 full-time members of staff.

According to journalist Jere Longman, being on alert duty is usually fairly uneventful for the pilots involved: “Protecting American airspace from attack was not a demanding job before September 11.… A week at Langley was a time to relax, watch television, work out, spend time on the computer, catch up on business. Like firemen, the pilots sat and waited for something to happen. When it did, they were usually scrambled to escort Navy jets with transponder problems to their home bases. Or to find doctors lost over the ocean in their s. Or, occasionally, to sniff out drug runners. It was a sleepy job. Dozing for dollars, they called it.”