There Are Some Things So Dumb...

Only a Troofer could believe them. In my recent post on David Ray Griffin's lecture in Japan, I mentioned as an aside the 81 minutes it took for the Air Force to intercept Payne Stewart's jet in 1999. Well, the Troofers let me have it with both barrels, but fortunately the shotgun wasn't loaded:

Lie number 2:
We get the familiar claim that intercepts in ten minutes were "routine"; mercifully he does not mention the Payne Stewart 81-minute intercept.
81 minutes??? LOL, gezuz you are a misleading bunch.

"Instead, according to an Air Force timeline, a series of military planes provided an emergency escort to the stricken Lear, beginning with a pair of F-16 Falcons from the Air National Guard at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., about 20 minutes after ground controllers lost contact."
Source:
Loss of Oxygen Cited as Possible Cause of Jet's Wayward Flight, Crash
Lynn Lunsford

The article in question is archived at a Troofer site.

Newspaper articles get things wrong all the time, and this is a clear example of that. The NTSB investigated the crash and wrote:



Gee, plane noticed off course at 9:33 and intercepted at 9:54, looks like 21 minutes, right? But there is that pesky little point about how the first time was 9:33 EDT and the second was 9:54 CDT. Which confuses the heck out of our Troofer commenters:

'time zone change'

ok that's the most retarded thing ever'

physically, the intercept still took 20 minutes, your time zone sh*t doesn't mean anything, than you AGAIN playing with words...

And:

to claim that time zone has anything to do with this, shows the dishonesty you constantly portray.

And:

time zone change... so Pat... if a jet takes 10 seconds to fly 1 mile, passes over a timezone, takes another 10 seconds to fly another mile... because they crossed over a timezone, that took an hour and 20 seconds?

And:

are you saying that because of the time change label 0933:38 EDT and 0952 CDT, that plane flew 1 hour with no activity from the controller at all?

are you dumbunkers seriously this stupid?

And:

Only an idiot would think crossing over a timezone adds an hour to the amount of time it would take to intercept a plane.

The Wikipedia page on the Payne Stewart plane crash notes that time zone changes can cause confusion about how long the intercept took, and so they translate the times:

Note: all times are presented in 24-hour, military format. Because the flight took place in both the Eastern Time zone and the Central Time zone, all times are given in this article in Coordinated Universal Time (which is indicated by the time followed by the letter Z)

At 1327:13Z, the controller from the Jacksonville ARTCC instructed the pilot to climb and maintain flight level (FL) 390 (39,000 feet above sea level). At 1327:18Z (0927:18 EDT), the pilot acknowledged the clearance by stating, "three nine zero bravo alpha." This was the last known radio transmission from the airplane, and occurred while the aircraft was passing through 23,000 feet (7,000 m). The next attempt to contact the aircraft occurred six minutes, 20 seconds later (14 minutes after departure), with the aircraft at 36,500 feet (11,100 m), and the controller's message went unacknowledged. The controller attempted to contact N47BA five more times in the next 4½ minutes, again with no answer.[1]

[edit] First interception

About 1454Z (now 0954 CDT due to the flight's crossing into the Central Time zone), a U.S. Air Force F-16 test pilot from the 40th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, who happened to be in the air nearby, was directed by controllers to intercept N47BA. When the fighter was about 2,000 feet (610 m) from the Learjet, at an altitude of about 46,400 feet (14,100 m), the test pilot made two radio calls to N47BA but did not receive a response.

So the key times are 1327Z plus six minutes, or 1333Z, and 1454Z. And the difference between those is, what? Anybody? Anybody? Beuller? That's right, 1 hour and 21 minutes.

Apparently Troofers don't think any adjustment for time zone change is necessary, which would be pretty cool if it were true. Consider this flight from Indianapolis to Chicago on Southwest Airlines:



Departing Indianapolis at 8:00 AM and arriving in Chicago at 7:55 AM? It must be magic. And since "Only an idiot would think crossing over a timezone adds an hour to the amount of time it would take", we can actually travel backwards in time by five minutes by hopping on a plane from Indy to Chi-town.