Two F-16 fighters scrambled by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, based at Peterson Air Force Base, tracked a stolen plane from the Wisconsin border to its safe landing in Missouri on Monday, a reported suicide attempt by the pilot.

Adam Dylan Leon, 31, was arrested at a convenience store in Ellsinore, Mo., shortly after landing the single-engine, four-seat Cessna on a rural Missouri road Monday night, ending a six-hour flight, The Associated Press reported from police sources.

NORAD didn’t order the plane shot down because it didn’t pose a national security threat, NORAD spokesman Mike Kucharek said.”We have this graduated approach,” he said. “There were times he was flying erratic and after a time he leveled out. We figured rather than provoke him, we’d let it play out. It speaks to the professionalism of the pilots.”

NORAD, the binational command with Canada charged with monitoring air, space and seas, said the Cessna took off from Thunder Bay, Ontario, without Navigation Canada authority and was reported as stolen. It entered U.S. airspace from the north and headed south over Lake Superior.

NORAD intercepted the aircraft about 2:43 p.m. MDT with two F-16s from the Minnesota Air National Guard, Duluth, Minn., which later were replaced by fighters from the Wisconsin Air National Guard, based in Madison, Wis. Those fighters handed off the Cessna to the Louisiana Air National Guard fighters from New Orleans.

After intercept, the pilot acknowledged the fighters but was unresponsive to specific non-verbal commands, the statement said. The fighters followed the aircraft until it landed at 7:45 p.m.

The intent of military intercepts is to have the identified aircraft establish communications with local FAA air traffic controllers and instruct the pilot to follow air traffic controllers to land safely.

Kucharek noted how the flight was handled demonstrates how far the nation’s security network has come since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“It was a whole federal government response,” he said, adding agencies involved on Monday included the Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Navigation Canada and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“The integrated NORAD/NorthCom command center allows quicker response and quicker action,” he said, referring to Northern Command, the nation’s homeland defense command. “Yesterday’s events proved that.”-Call Zubeck at 636-0238 

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