Depends... What time did the FAA realize that Flights 77 and 93 were hijacked? I would say that would be a determining factor.
Checked lots of press stories and timelines - found nothing definitive on these two flights. However, when the FAA realized these flights were hijacked isn't really the determining factor since highjacking is not a necessary condition for an intercept.
Interception is indicated when a plane a) loses communications and/or b) goes off the flight path it's required to file before take-off, because it keeps a plane in trouble--for whatever reason--from straying into the flight paths of other aircraft.
AA #77 lost radio contact at 8:50 and lost the transponder at 8:56. Shortly thereafter it left the flight path. UA #93 lost communications at approx. 9:20 and there were two quick radio transmissions from the hijackers at 9:22, so sometime soon after 9:22 the plane left the flight path.
AA #77 hit the Pentagon at 9:45, about 49 min. after losing communications. UA #93 crashed at 10:10, about 50 min. after losing communications.
Data is taken from your posts on the "Gutsy Cabin Crew" thread.
How many planes did the FAA suspect of being hijacked at that point?
Do the regulations require an intercept? Or do they simply state that the Air Traffic Controller notify his FAA supervisor immediately? Some of the wording for the FAA regs you gave me is very ambiguous about this procedure. It seems to be a lengthy time consuming one and all I could find in the end was a passage that stated "If an escort is ordered..."
On 9/11, would fighter planes have been able to shoot down Flight 77 without authorization from the President or Vice President? In other words, even if they had been scrambled in time, caught up with this flight- would they have been able to do anything about it?
I think it is quite clear from this article and others and the regs you posted to me on the other thread that the system, as it existed on 9/11, was actually quite slow and ponderous and geared more towards a typical hijacking. The FAA state in several articles since then that the system has been improved (implying, obviously that the system wasn't fast enough on 9/11) so that the FAA and NORAD can communicate with each other instantaneously now.
Also, if you refer to the article about the Korean Airliner that was almost shot down over Alaska- the pilot of the flight had issued a "hijack code" on his transponder for 90 minutes. NORAD wanted to shoot him down. FAA kept arguing against it. Later, NORAD denied wanting to shoot the plane down because they knew that they would have been overstepping their authority- it wasn't allowed for them to take such a step without the proper approval. If you remember, President Bush was in Florida in a school classroom at the time (when the planes collided with the WTC)- I sincerely doubt he would've ordered a shootdown without a lot more info and by the time he would've gotten the info, it still would've been too late.
What I'm getting at is, the system you believe existed on 9/11- did not, in fact, exist. I'm sure there are a lot of people in the FAA who have sat back and second guessed their actions since 9/11. But always keep in mind, there wasn't a big "deception" going on in the FAA Command Building. Big, unprecedented decisions were being made at a very high rate of speed, a lot of heavy sh!t was happening, they were trying to do something that had never been done before (land the entire fleet) and they had up to a dozen planes that could've been hijacked. In particular, in the 0930 to 0935 time frame, they had a plane that had been ordered to land in Pittsburgh that refused to do so and wanted to continue to Washington DC and they also had a plane that dissappeared from radar over W. Virginia and three incoming flights over the Atlantic were sending out distress signals. Flight 77 was just one of many flights they were worried about. There were a lot of people involved at the FAA in all this- a lot of witnesses that actually saw and pariticipated in the decision making process that morning. It is not rational to conclude that so many participants were all in collusion to drag their feet in order to allow the attacks to happen or for any other reason.
Flight 93, if you remember, was the source of some confusion for the FAA. They originally thought it was Flight 1989 that was hijacked. But all that is beside the point. They did have fighters in the air at that point that would've shot the plane if need be, so that particular base was covered. There were fighters defending DC airspace at that point and fighters defending NYC airspace. According to NORAD, there were fighters on their way to intercept Flight 93. It never would have made it to DC or NYC. They got the job done on that one.
But the bottom line is still and will always be- the people who bear 100% responsibility for the crimes on 9/11 were the terrorists themselves. Defenses can always be breeched and defenses can always be improved. There is no perfect defense, there is no perfect system. I pointed at the system that allowed the two planes to collide over Germany. That was basically an idiot proof system. The Crash Avoidance System when it detects an imminent collision orders one plane to climb and the other plane to descend- how do you screw that up? Well, human error is how and that's exactly what happened. A very simple, very proven system failed because of human error. It happens...