In recent days, much speculation has occurred over the Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot their destination by more than 150 miles.

Speculation has ranged from whether the pilots were drunk, asleep, otherwise occupied with flight attendants (ahem!), or something completely different.

But I think the more important question is: "Where was the FAA?"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in this post-9/11 world, I thought the policy of the FAA was to engage Military jets to either escort and/or shoot down any airplane that doesn't respond to Air Traffic Control.

In this case, the pilots went a full 78 minutes (more than an hour!) without responding to calls from Air Traffic Control. The airline even went off of the radar at one point.

What I want to know is, where were the Military jets? Did they receive an order to scramble? Did they escort the airliner at any point? And if not, why not?

MSNBC News is reporting this morning that the White House is (finally) suggesting that on Wednesday night, the White House situation room began "monitoring" the flight and had the National Guard on standby.  On "standby" for 1 hour and 18 minutes?  You do realize that is 3 times the amount of time it took flight 11 to slam into the World Trade Towers, right?  *sigh*

While the mystery of the pilots "asleep at the switch" is yet to be unraveled, Americans today should be asking the FAA (and the White House) a more important question: why it appears that the government failed to follow National Security procedures implemented after 9/11 to keep America safe.