Lamond credits his previous knowledge of the command center as “probably the most important” background in understanding the inner workings of the facility. “We wouldn’t have had anywhere near as successful an interaction with them if we had just knocked on the door on September 11 at 10 o’clock and said, ‘Excuse me, but can we live here for a while,’” he said. “Matter of fact, they probably would have said, ‘Thank you very much, but there’s the door.’ So I think it’s critical that we had built that relationship beforehand.”
In creating its presence at the command center earlier this year, NBAA had patterned it after that operated by the airlines under the Air Transport Association (ATA) banner. It was established to give NBAA subscribers real-time information about the National Airspace System to try and mitigate problems before they become bigger problems, and to provide information before it comes out in a notam.
