The Plan for the Security Control of Air Traffic and Air Navigation Aids (SCATANA) is an emergency preparedness plan of the United States which prescribes the joint action to be taken by appropriate elements of the Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, and the Federal Communications Commission in the interest of national security in order to effectively control air traffic and air navigation aids under emergency conditions.
[4] Even in that instance, the emergency plan was only partially implemented as the Defense Department left command and control of the air traffic system with the FAA and intentionally allowed all radio navigational aids to remain in operation to aid in the process of controlling and landing the thousands of planes which were aloft in domestic airspace.
[5] The 9/11 Commission Report never refers to SCATANA directly, but it does discuss this unprecedented order and commends the air traffic controllers who carried it out.
[6] While several people have been credited with issuing the SCATANA order for a national ground stop, the 9/11 Commission credits FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney with effectively issuing the directive.
At 9:42 am on the morning of September 11, 2001, after the Air Traffic Control System Command Center learned from news reports that a plane (American Airlines Flight 77) had crashed into the Pentagon, Sliney "ordered all FAA facilities to instruct all aircraft to land at the nearest airport".