Team collaboration of the Northeast Air Defense Sector and Federal Aviation Administration during the September 11, 2001 attacks

Abstract

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, brought about changes in the procedures for interagency collaboration. That day air traffic controllers in New York, Boston, Washington, and Cleveland were scrambling due to the hijacking of four American commercial airliners. In their efforts to bring order to chaos the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in communication with Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) scrambled fighter aircraft to escort the airliners. The collaborative teamwork that occurred during this response is recorded in the radio transcripts between NEADS and FAA air traffic controllers. The goal of this thesis is to use the September 11, 2001, NEADS/FAA channel 4 transcripts to provide a real-world example of a team collaborating on a unique, one of a kind problem, to contribute to the effort to validate the structural model of team collaboration, developed under the Collaboration and Knowledge Integration Program, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. The focus of the model is on individual cognitive processes used during agency or team collaboration with the goal of understanding how individuals and different agencies work together towards reaching a decision.