The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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October 29, 2009

Your View: Fighter jets should have tracked airliner

By Donavon G. Mickelson, St. James

Look out America. We have all heard about the two pilots who gave free bonus miles to 144 passengers into the state of Wisconsin and back to Minnesota.

I want to know where Homeland Security was involving this “lost” or “missing” or “out-of-touch” passenger plane. Didn’t we learn anything from 9/11?

Where were the fighter jets that should have been in the air shortly after losing touch with the pilots? Doesn’t the government remember the planes on 9/11 that we lost contact with? The government made a statement that they were monitoring this situation. From where, and what would they do about it?

I am expecting, as a citizen of the United States, that the government should have had at least a couple of fighter jets in the air and on each side of that Airbus looking into the windows where the pilots were supposed to be to see if they were alive or if the Taliban was going to make another landing into one of our tall buildings.

This was a shocking case of negligence, but think of how shocking and negligent it would have been if there would have been hi-jackers on that plane and they took out a major building with thousands of people in one of our cities.

Citizens/voters, it’s time to get on the case of our Department of Homeland Security first and then worry about those sorry pilots, but I think they have already sealed their own fate.



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