THE COMMAND and control of fanatics bent on murder and determined to commit suicide, American Airlines Flight 11 had been transformed from a passenger jet into a guided missile. Atta’s radio transmissions about returning to the airport and everything being okay were elements of a cruel ruse to pacify passengers and to prevent an uprising against his outnumbered men. He had played on old beliefs about how hijackings occurred and were usually resolved without violence. Even though his lies weren’t heard by Flight 11’s passengers, the radio calls and the hijackers’ advance training and in-flight actions revealed a carefully calibrated plan built on surprise, violence, trickery, and a studied understanding of their targets, all to achieve a barbaric goal.
The Boeing 767 that was American Airlines Flight 11 completed an unapproved, L-shaped path through bright blue skies that covered roughly three hundred miles from Boston, west to Albany, then south over the streets of Manhattan. At the last millisecond of its trip, at a speed estimated at 440 miles per hour, the silver plane’s nose touched the glass and steel of the north face of the 96th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
TJX planning manager Tara Creamer’s instructions to her husband, John, on how to care for their children would need to last a lifetime.
Cambodian farmers who relied on John Ogonowski would have to find a new teacher and patron. His wife and daughters would be set adrift without their anchor.
Amy Sweeney’s children would have to get to school, and through life, without her.
Betty Ong’s elderly friends would need new rides to doctors’ appointments. Her sister Cathie would never again hear her say “I love you lots.”
Robert Norton’s stepson would have to get married without him.
Daniel Lee’s soon-to-be-born daughter would spend her entire life without him.
Daniel Lewin’s family and his company would have to forge new paths without his genius or his guidance.
Someone else would have to find a health aide for Cora Hidalgo Holland’s mother.
Susan MacKay’s air traffic controller husband, Doug, who planned to have John Ogonowski say hi for him, would have to live with the knowledge that Susan passed through airspace over the Hudson River Valley that he normally controlled.
Dozens of children would grow up without a mother or a father, an aunt or uncle, a grandmother or grandfather. Parents would grow old without a daughter or a son; husbands, wives, and partners would be forced to carry on alone. Grief would grip untold families, friends, colleagues, and strangers, wounded by the deaths of seventy-six passengers and eleven crew members, all murdered by five al-Qaeda hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11.
The time of their deaths was 8:46:25 a.m.
More than six minutes later, the two F-15 fighter jets from Otis took flight. They soared south toward New York in pursuit of a passenger jet that no longer existed.
But something terrible was happening on another passenger plane also bound from Boston to Los Angeles.
United Airlines Flight 175
TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER TAKEOFF FROM LOGAN, WHILE AMERICAN Flight 11 was still airborne, United Flight 175 reached the crystal-blue skies over upstate New York.
With the passage of time and distance came a transfer of ground control from Boston Center to a similar FAA facility called New York Center, located in a sleepy suburb on Long Island. New York Center’s radar scopes covered some of the world’s busiest skies: air traffic over the New York metro area and parts of Pennsylvania.
With the handoff of the flight from Peter Zalewski in Boston Center to his colleagues in New York Center came a new radio frequency for the pilots of Flight 175. At 8:41 a.m., several minutes after being instructed to veer away from Flight 11, they used that new frequency to report the disturbing radio communication they’d heard earlier.
“Yeah. We figured we’d wait to go to your center,” said Captain Victor Saracini. “We heard a suspicious transmission on our departure out of Boston. Ah, with someone, ah, it sounded like someone keyed the mic and said, ah, ‘Everyone, ah, stay in your seats.’”
Saracini didn’t say exactly when he heard the message, and he didn’t know its source among the multiple planes that used the same frequency. The words he used didn’t precisely fit any of the three accidental transmissions believed to be from Mohamed Atta from Flight 11’s cockpit.
Saracini might have been referring to Atta’s second message: “Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you will injure yourselves and the airplane. Just stay quiet.” But the fact that Saracini heard only one message made it more likely to have been the hijacker’s third and last transmission. Otherwise, Saracini presumably would have mentioned one or both of the earlier threatening calls. The third call began at one second before 8:34 a.m.: “Nobody move, please. We are going back to the airport. Don’t try to make any stupid moves.”
Saracini didn’t say why he waited to report the message, but one logical explanation would be that he assumed that the controllers at Boston Center already knew about it because they used the same frequency. Once Flight 175 passed to New York Center and changed radio frequencies, Saracini presumably wanted to be certain that his new ground controller knew about it, too. If so, Saracini showed good foresight: Flight 175’s air traffic controller in New York Center was Dave Bottiglia, who hadn’t yet heard anything about the chaos unfolding aboard American Flight 11 as it raced toward New York City.
“Oh, okay,” Bottiglia answered. “I’ll pass that along over here.”
Under normal circumstances, an official at the FAA would share a report of a suspicious cockpit communication with airline officials, in this case the United Airlines System Operations Control center, just outside Chicago. But no one from Boston Center or New York Center did so. Bottiglia could have remedied that, but other worries suddenly demanded his full attention.
Moments after Bottiglia heard from Saracini, another New York Center flight controller walked over and showed Bottiglia a point, or “target,” on his radar screen.
“You see this target here?” the controller asked. “This is American Eleven. Boston Center thinks it’s a hijack.”
Now Dave Bottiglia had responsibility for both American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175. Having been made aware that Flight 11 was racing toward Manhattan, descending rapidly with its transponder turned off and someone in the cockpit making threats, Bottiglia did his best to keep track of the American Airlines plane.
THE FIRST OUTWARD sign of trouble aboard United Airlines Flight 175 came at 8:47 a.m., about one minute after Flight 11 hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
Someone in the United plane’s cockpit changed the plane’s transponder code twice within a minute. Bottiglia didn’t notice because he was furiously searching for American Flight 11, which by then no longer existed.
Three minutes later, at 8:50 a.m., the pilot of a Delta Air Lines flight radioed
