9/11 Special: Part 4 - The day of the attacks
This is part 4 of The Four Planes, a 4-part series that pieces together the events that led to 9/11. Today’s story revisits the astonishing events that unfolded on arguably the most infamous date in history. The drama in Afghanistan this past week bears testimony to the profound and lingering impact of what happened 20 years ago.
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If you want to get up to speed (recommended but not needed to follow today’s story), here are the previous articles:
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a near cloudless day on the east coast of the United States. In Florida, President George W. Bush started his day by going for his usual early morning run, followed by his routine intelligence briefing from the CIA. His briefing made no mention of al-Qaeda or terrorism - indicative of how off guard America was caught that day.
Back in 2001, airport security was lax. Ensuring a safe flight was a priority, but not if it came at the expense of delays that impacted airline revenue. The morning of September 11, all 19 out of 19 hijackers passed through security carrying chemical sprays, box cutters and utility knives.
This is what happened on each of the four planes.
Between 07:31 and 07:40, Mohammed Atta and his fellow attackers had taken their seats in first and business class aboard AA11, the nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Boston. The plane departed at 07:59 with a crew of 11 and 76 passengers (excluding the hijackers).
At 08:14, as the plane had climbed to 26,000 feet (roughly when the “fasten seatbelt” sign would have been turned off), there was a routine communication to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) air traffic control (ATC) centre in Boston. All seemed normal. Seconds later, Peter Zalewski from the ATC instructed the pilots, John Ogonowski and Tom McGuinness, to climb to 35,000 feet. But this time, there was no response.
Most of what’s known about what happened on the flight is thanks to reports from two flight attendants, Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney. From the back of the plane, Ong contacted the American Airlines Southeastern Reservations Office in North Carolina. The call started five minutes after the hijacking began and lasted 25 minutes. Throughout, Ong tried to remain calm and explain what was happening onboard. Sweeney contacted the American Airlines office in Boston and shared a similar account.
Things went haywire the moment the fasten seatbelt sign was switched off. The two attackers in first class sprayed mace to create confusion, then stabbed the two first class attendants. This cleared the way for Atta to move into the cockpit. The details of how he was able to gain access are unknown. With the front of the plane under hijacker control, the remaining passengers and flight attendants were marshalled to the back of the plane. Atta’s men claimed they had a bomb. It is understood that Daniel Lewin, a former Israeli military member seated in business class, leapt up to fight the attackers. But unbeknownst to Lewin, another hijacker was seated right behind him. The hijacker slit Lewin’s throat, making him the first known casualty of 9/11.
News of Ong and Sweeney’s calls never made it to Zalewski, who had still not received a response from Captain Ogonowski. At 08:21, Zalewski grew even more concerned when AA11’s transponder was switched off (a critical device used to track planes in flight). But still, he didn’t suspect a hijacking.
Then, at 08:24, there was a communication from Atta, who mistakenly transmitted the message to ATC and not to the passengers as intended:
“We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and we’ll be okay. We are returning to the airport…..Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you will injure yourselves and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”
This led Zalewski to believe that a hijacking was underway. He frantically yelled for his supervisor’s attention and flipped a switch that allowed all the air traffic controllers at Boston Center to hear the communications from AA11. By using the term “some planes”, Atta gave away a crucial clue that there would be more than one hijacking. Unfortunately, no one noticed this.
At 08:34, there was another communication:
“Nobody move, please. We are going back to the airport. Don’t try to make any stupid moves.”
This call prompted the Boston Center to contact the military for the first time at 08:37, requesting assistance to intercept the aircraft. But with the transponder turned off, ATC and the military couldn’t determine the plane’s exact location. To make matters worse, neither the military nor ATC were informed of the calls from Ong and Sweeney, so there was no intel about what was happening on board.
At 08:43, AA11 took a big south-southwest turn, putting it on a trajectory directly towards Manhattan. At this point, Sweeney was still talking to the American Airlines office:
“Something is wrong. We’re in a rapid descent… . We are all over the place.
We are flying low.
We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low!
Oh my God!—We are way too low!”
The call ended abruptly.
At 8:46, AA11, travelling at 800 kilometres per hour, missiled into the 96th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC).
Before 9/11, aeroplane hijackings usually involved landing the planes and hostage negotiations. Using commercial airlines as kamikaze missiles was a totally unprecedented method of attack and caught American defences woefully unprepared. At 08:53, F-15 military jets took off to intercept AA11. They were unaware that the plane crashed more than 6 minutes earlier.
At the same time, horrors were unfolding on another flight that had departed from Boston.
After breezing through security with relative ease, Marwan al Shehhi and four other men took their seats in business and first class on UA175 from Boston to Los Angeles. With a crew of nine and 56 passengers on board (including three children), the plane soared into the clear east coast skies at 08:14.
At 08:42, Captain Victor Saracini contacted ATC to report a “suspicious transmission” he had overheard coming from AA11. Then, at 08:47 came the first sign of trouble as UA175’s transponder code was changed twice. It’s expected that the hijackers attacked sometime during this five-minute interval. The modus operandi was similar to the one followed on AA11. Both pilots were killed, and two people were stabbed. Using mace and bomb threats, the hijackers herded everyone to the back of the aircraft.
New York Center flight controller Dave Bottiglia initially missed UA175’s transponder changes as he was frantically searching for AA11 that had already been reported as hijacked and was racing towards Manhattan. But upon noticing the abnormality, he contacted UA175 at 08:51 with the instruction to return to the correct code. To his horror, there was no response after five attempts. Bottiglia now had two hijacked planes to deal with. Then, UA175 deviated from its assigned flight path. This set the plane on a potential collision course with other aircraft and forced Bottigliato to alert and clear other planes from its path.
President Bush, who was visiting an elementary school in Florida at the time, was notified at 08:50 that a small plane had hit the North Tower in what seemed to be an accident.
At 08:55, as rescue teams were racing to the WTC complex to assist with the evacuation of the North Tower, the Port Authority made a major mistake when they declared via the South Tower’s public address system that the building was secure:
“Your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen. Building Two is secure. There is no need to evacuate Building Two. If you are in the midst of evacuation, you may use the reentry doors and the elevators to return to your office. Repeat, Building Two is secure.”
At roughly the same time, Lee and Eunice Hanson received a phone call from their son Peter, a passenger on UA175:
“I think they’ve taken over the cockpit—An attendant has been stabbed—and someone else up front may have been killed. The plane is making strange moves. Call United Airlines—Tell them it’s Flight 175, Boston to LA.”
Lee Hanson couldn’t get hold of the airline, so he phoned the local police department. The officer informed him of the first plane that hit the WTC and suggested that he turn on the news.
Lee and Eunice received the final phone call from their son Peter at 09:00:
“It’s getting bad, Dad—A stewardess was stabbed—They seem to have knives and Mace—They said they have a bomb—It’s getting very bad on the plane—Passengers are throwing up and getting sick—The plane is making jerky movements—I don’t think the pilot is flying the plane—I think we are going down—I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building—Don’t worry, Dad—If it happens, it’ll be very fast—My God, my God.”
At 09:03, along with millions of people, Lee and Eunice Hanson watched with terror and disbelief as UA175 plummeted into floors 77 to 85 of the South Tower on live television.
When the second plane hit, the F-15s were more than 50 miles away and still looking for AA11. The possible hijacking of UA175 was only reported to the F-15s three minutes after the second plane’s crash - an indictment of the poor communication between the control and command agencies on the day. When the two jets finally arrived, they established an air patrol over Manhattan. If and where they could expect more attacks was anyone’s guess.
At 09:06, President Bush was about to start reading to the elementary school students when he received a message from his Chief of Staff:
"A second plane hit the other tower, and America's under attack."
Dazed and confused, the president continued with the reading.
Headed for Los Angeles, AA77 departed from Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC at 08:20. Again the team of hijackers led by Hani Hanjour were seated in first and business class. One of them was Khalid al-Mihdhar, who U.S. intelligence officials knew to be a member of al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, this was not communicated to the FAA, so al-Mihdhar was never added to a “no-fly list”.
The plane only carried a third of its capacity - in addition to the hijackers, there were five crew members and 53 passengers from all walks of life on board. The passengers included a school group en route to California for a science conference. There were also two men who had left their offices in the Pentagon to travel for business. Leslie Hutton and her husband Charles Falkenberg, along with their two daughters, were on their way to Australia for a two-month trip. Newlyweds Zandra and Robert Riis Ploger III were en route to Hawaii for their honeymoon. “New Job New City New State New Life”, wrote Mari-Rae Sopper in an email to family and friends before boarding. After quitting her job as a lawyer, she was on her way to Santa Barbara to pursue her dream job as a women’s gymnastics coach at the University of California. Flight attendant Renée May had told her parents that she had big news to share and would visit them after landing in Los Angeles. The 39-year-old had found out that she was pregnant the day before.
The hijacking occurred just more than thirty minutes into the flight and followed a plan of attack similar to AA11 and UA175. Passengers were moved to the back of the plane, but there were no reports of stabbings, mace or bomb threats.
The flight was overseen by Indianapolis Center air traffic controllers, who at 08:54, noticed AA77 making an unauthorized turn to the southwest. Then the transponder was switched off. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact the cockpit, flight control believed that the plane might have crashed due to electrical or mechanical failure. The Indianapolis Center held on to this assumption until 09:20 when they were notified of the WTC crashes and reports of the hijacking of AA77.
Until that point, the hijacking of multiple planes at once had not happened anywhere in the world in over 30 years, adding further to U.S. unpreparedness. As AA77 raced towards the nation’s capital, the military was only informed of the suspected hijacking at 09:34, forty minutes after the plane disappeared from radar screens. This prompted the immediate evacuation of Vice President Dick Cheney from the White House into an underground security bunker at 09:37.
A77 crashed into the Pentagon at exactly the same time.
Five minutes later, American airspace was shut down. All international flights headed for the U.S. were redirected to Canada, and the 4,546 planes already in flight were ordered to land at the nearest airport.
Only one plane ignored the order.
After a 42 minute delay, UA93 departed from Newark Liberty International Airport bound for San Francisco at 08:42. In the largely empty cabin were 33 passengers and seven crew members. The hijacking team included only four members, one less than the five-man teams that hijacked the three other commercial flights on 9/11. Ziad Jarrah and his fellow hijackers had strategically planned to take flights scheduled to depart at roughly the same time, so the delay threatened their element of surprise. Added to this, the hijackers on UA93 initiated their cockpit takeover 46 minutes after takeoff, unlike the other planes where the cockpit attacks occurred within 30 minutes.
By the time UA93 was at a cruising altitude, air traffic teams had begun communicating news of the events on AA11 and UA175 to airborne aircraft. At 09:24, United’s dispatcher (who was communicating with all flights) sent a transmission to UA93’s captain, Jason Dahl:
“Beware any cockpit intrusion—Two a/c [aircraft] hit World Trade Center.”
Two minutes later (at 09:26), a slightly confused Captain Dahl responded:
“Confirm latest mssg plz—Jason”
Before the dispatcher could respond, the hijackers jumped from their business and first class seats and attacked the cockpit at 09:28. The radio caught the sounds of the struggle heard by ground controllers and pilots of other planes on the same frequency. Captain Dahl shouted:
“Mayday! … Mayday! … Mayday!
Hey, get out of here—get out of here!”
Three minutes later, the voice of a different, heavily breathing man with a Middle Eastern accent was heard on the radio:
“Ladies and gentlemen: Here the captain. Please sit down, keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board. So, sit.”
It’s believed that the threat came from Jarrah, who, like Atta, inadvertently delivered the message to ground controllers and not to the passengers as intended. A cockpit voice recording indicated a lengthy struggle between the hijackers and a woman in the cockpit. The repeated cries of “I don’t want to die” and “no, please!” were followed by a disturbing silence and a hijacker saying: “Everything is fine. I finished.”
While this was unfolding in the air, on the ground, news spread of the attacks and a wave of evacuations swept across the country. In fear of being obliterated by diving planes, people ran from federal buildings and iconic landmarks like the U.S. Capitol, the Empire State and the Sears Tower in Chicago.
The attack plan on UA93 followed nearly the same script as that of AA11, UA175, and AA77. However, a key difference was that the hostages made more use of airphones and cellular phones to contact family, friends, and authorities. Due to the delays in UA93’s departure, the hostages were made aware of the WTC crashes. Based on this information, the passengers decided to attack the cockpit in an attempt to retake the plane. Calls to loved ones were cut short as passengers who were strangers only minutes earlier joined the revolt against the terrorists. One passenger told a family member:
“Everyone’s running up to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.”
As the hostages reached the cockpit, Jarrah tried to knock them over by violently rolling the plane from left to right then pitching it up and down. Between the sounds of crashes, shouts and breaking glass, the recording of what ensued in the cockpit is like something from a movie:
Jarrah: “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?”
Other hijacker: “No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.”
Unknown passenger: “In the cockpit. If we don’t we’ll die!”
Unknown passenger: “Roll it!”
Jarrah: “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!…Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?”
Other hijacker: “Yes, put it in it, and pull it down”
Unknown passenger: “Go! Go! Move! Move!”
Unknown hijacker: Pull it down! Pull it down!”
Unknown hijacker: “Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.”
The plane, intended to hit the U.S. Capitol or the White House, crashed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at over 900 kilometres per hour, about 20 minutes flying time from Washington DC. Had it not been for a group of brave, unarmed passengers, the plane most certainly who have reached its intended targets.
At 10:03, the aerial assault on the U.S. was finally over, and by 10:28, both towers of the WTC had collapsed.
Including the 19 hijackers, 2,996 people from more than 90 countries were killed.
This brings to an end my mini-series on 9/11. From next week, I’ll be going back to my usual mix of shorter and varied pieces.
Sources:
I compiled this story from multiple sources, but I relied mostly on these. If you’d like to read more about 9/11, they are all highly recommended.
Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It by Terry McDermott
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda's Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004)
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This series was well written and well researched.
It was a painful reminder of how the world changed that day.
Thank you for your work in chronicling this horrific event.