0820 Flight 11 Flight 11 stops transmitting IFF beacon signal while over the Hudson River.
0824 Flight 11 Flight 11 broadcasts “We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you will be OK. We are returning to the airport. Nobody move.” Apparently, one of the hijackers confused the aircraft’s radio with its public-address system. Air traffic control responds “Who’s trying to call me?” Then from Flight 11, “Everything will be OK. If you try to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”
0825 Flight 11 Boston Air Traffic Control notifies several air traffic control centers that hijack is in progress.
0840 NORAD Boston air traffic center notifies NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector in Rome, N.Y. that Flight 11 has been hijacked. Other reports say 0838.
0841 Flight 175 Flight 175 enters New York air traffic control and transmits "We heard a suspicious transmission on our departure from B-O-S. “Sounds like someone keyed the mike and said, `Everyone, stay in your seats.’”
0843 NORAD FAA notifies NORAD that Flight 175 has been hijacked.
0900 Flight 93 Around this time, United Airlines systems operations transmits a systemwide message, warning its pilots of a potential “cockpit intrusion”. Flight 93, flying over western PA and into northern OH, replies “Confirmed”.
0900 Flight 77 Flight 77 is seen making a 180 turn and heading back to Washington [Does that count as a U-Turn? :D]
0916 NORAD FAA informs NORAD that Flight 93 may have been hijacked.
0924 NORAD FAA notifies NORAD that Flight 77 may have been hijacked, 28 minutes after its transponder was turned off. Other reports say 0925.
I mean what do you want? An engraved plaque?
I don’t know that they could have gotten to the first three in time, but even with the most conservative scenario, they had over 45 minutes to get to Flight 93. Really it shoud have been an hour. I don’t understand how the FAA wouldn’t have notified NORAD that 93 had been hijacked right at 9:00.
The only official explanation I’ve heard is that they didn’t have time to get there, not that they delayed because they were having meetings about it.
Why? Because United broadcast the possibility of “cockpit intrusion” and the guy in the front of the plane said “confirmed”? “Confirmed” what? Confirmed he got the message? Confirmed he was a hijacker?
And note the qualifier may have been in regards to Flight 93. Whoever called that in wasn’t sure.
And, to my mind, what happened those 28 or 29 minutes would be interesting to know. Did ATC suspect a hijacking? Did they think they were looking at an equipment failure? How often did they attempt to talk to Flight 77? Was there any response?
Yes, it does smarty-pants. That one was clearly a u-turn - what about the other three?
No - but knowing where it’s going makes it easier to intercept and/or protect the intended target. If, for instance, the military had known Flight 93 was headed to DC they could have simply gone to DC and met the plane there, rather than trying to catch up with it then follow.
Yes, if the scale of the map shows the eastern half of North America you can see the loop, but ATC doesn’t work on that scale. A controller sees just a piece of the sky, a much smaller piece than that needed to see the full series of turns made by Flight 93.
A controller is assigned his slice of sky - he can’t say “Well, I’m tired of looking at Cincinnati, let’s check out what’s happening in Newark” If a plane leaves his area then he “hands off” to another controller down the line. So I don’t assume any single controller at 9 am had access to the “big picture” later given to the public.
ATC’s conduct and/or culpability should be judged on the information they had at the time events unfolded, not on what we knew a week or a month or a year later.
It certainly indicates something is amiss - but as I’ve said in other threads, an airplane in distress with no functioning radio may also make unusual course changes, turns, and so forth with no sinister intent. The plane involved in the Sioux City Iowa crash was unable to fly in a straight line (although in that case they were able to talk to ATC about the problem).
So, when a controller sees a plane flying erratically he has to determine what is going on - is someone having a malfunction, an emergency… or is it a hijacking? Short of someone coming on and saying “I have hijacked this plane” he’s going to have to deduce what’s going on from behavior.
As an example - the Payne Stewart case involved an airplane that went suddenly radio silent and failed to comply with ATC directions. Was that a hijacking - or a malfunction/emergency?
How you respond depends on what’s going on. That will take at least a few minutes to figure out in most cases. The truth is that statistically speaking, erratic flight is far, far more likely to be due to some sort of malfunction of either plane or pilot than due to a hijacking.
I don’t understand why people expect that an interception of the other planes would have occurred INSTANTLY after the second tower was hit. This isn’t the movies, this isn’t a video game - it’s real life where it takes measure time to make determinations, push a throttle forward and kick in afterburners, you don’t have all the information, and know one person knows everything about what’s going on.
I assume you mean the fighter planes dispatched to investigate flight 11 and later flight 175. They were ‘delayed’ because they weren’t instantly dispatched as soon as something strange happened (i.e. as soon as the FAA THOUGHT flight 11 MIGHT have been hijacked). They were further ‘delayed’ as they needed to be prepped…they weren’t just sitting there fueled, armed with the engines on ready to fly. In addition, obviously the pilots didn’t feel any great sense of urgency (at the time) as they didn’t go to maximum military power (at least according to the cite. At max power they could have gotten there 1 min. before flight 175 crashed…instead they were 8 min. out).
So ya…in a sense they were ‘delayed’ because people were ‘having meeting’…in other words, people were trying to figure out what the hell was going on. What we are seeing now is all the pieces assembled for our viewing pleasure. At the time, people had fragementary information from various sources and didn’t know what the big picture was…what was happening.
Have you never been in a crisis before people? Have you never been in a situation where bad things were happening fast and you were having to try and piece things together from different sources and fragementary data?? Its nice that we can NOW look back and see the whole picture, see what this controller saw, here what this other one heard, know what this agency was seeing, see what that one knew. Unfortunately at the time they didn’t have that luxury…they had minutes to make decisions and they didn’t KNOW what was happening, if all these events were even related, how wide spread it was, etc etc. Its nice through hindsight to think you’d be smarter or faster or better than others would have been…but its a delusion.
And the cite I wanted blowero was a cite showing any one agency or whatever that KNEW which planes had been hijacked, and KNEW what their intent was. Sure, this agency or controller knew a little piece, and that one knew another little piece, and so on. But afaik NO ONE knew everything that was going on…knew the big picture. No one knew exactly which planes were being hijacked, and by the time the DID know there wasn’t time to do much about it…the planes were crashing only 20-30 min after they were hijacked as far as I can tell…not enough time for anyone to react, even if they DID know the intent of the hijackers.
Why would you assume that? I think it’s pretty obvious that they wouldn’t have had foreknowledge of the first plane hitting the WTC, but once that happened, it should have set off some alarm bells, wouldn’t you agree? And from the timeline, I don’t know that they could have gotten to 175 in time. But as I said before, they conservatively had 45 minutes to go after Flight 93, much much more than enough time to intercept it. They would have had to be on the moon not to know something was up by that time.
I think we’re arguing at cross purposes. I never said I thought they should have been able to intercept Flight 11. So to that extent, I agree with you.
Well I think it was pretty obvious they weren’t the Saudi Arabia welcome wagon.
Not true. The intent should have been known as soon as the first plane hit a building, or certainly when the second plane hit. Two commerical airliners hijacked and both hitting the WTC is a little much for a coincidence, wouldn’t you say? Hell, even the passengers on Flight 93 knew what the intent was. Fighters were IN THE AIR, and they knew Flight 93 was off course and probably hijacked. It’s inexcusable not to have at least tried to get there in time. And with regard to ALL the flights, there appear to be inexplicable delays between when the FAA was aware of things being amiss, and when NORAD reports being told about it. I don’t know who’s to blame, but don’t you think it’s the kind of thing that should have been investigated?
Anyone else having a lot of trouble connection to the board today?
I’ll be honest…I don’t know all the details surrounding flight 93. Are you saying they didn’t even attempt to send planes after it? Even to investigate? I thought they had sent planes after it…thats part of the conspiricy theory as to why it crashed.
As to investigating it, I thought it WAS investigated by the FAA. Wasn’t there a report about it last year?? I don’t see any ‘inexplicable delays’ from either of the flights that hit the WTC, nor the one that hit the Pentagon that can’t be plausably be explained by simply shock with possibly a dose of dithering by the various agencies as they scrambled to figure out what was up. Even after the two planes hit the WTC there is nothing to say that losing contact with another plane HAS to mean another plane hijacked and being used for a weapon…though it would certainly point that way.
Again, we have the luxury of retrospect and hindsight…plus loads of time to kick back and evaluate things at lesure…plus all the investigations and such that have gathered all the information for us to use to second guess. Lest we all forget, those air traffic controllers ALSO had other planes to deal with, those administers also had to think of what they COULD do, etc etc. In relative terms this whole thing went down too fast to reasonable (IMHO) expect people to be able to react and make good decisions. Now, all that said, I DON’T know the details of flight 93 so perhaps there they did screw up. I’d have to see all the data to make a determination.
They probably eliminated the possibility it was Santa Clause too…other than that though, they didn’t know WHAT it was at the time, nor how wide spread. Try and put yourself in their shoes, knowing nothing at the time and getting fragementary and maybe even contridictory data.
No, I didn’t think you felt an intercept of flight 11 was reasonable. I doubt you REALLY think that it would have been reasonable to intercept 175 either. I doubt you even reasonably think that flight 77 could have been stopped because of the short flight time and short time between when they figured out it was hijacked and when it crashed. As I said, I don’t know all the details on flight 93…how long it was in flight from when they first determined or guessed it had been hijacked to when it crashed, what steps were taken with reguard to if they tried to intercept it, etc.
Er…good point. I do tend to bang on a bit sometimes.
Ok, found another web site that goes into further detail about the other two flights. I’ll try not to be as long winded this time in deference to blowero.
This is 8 min. after the second plane (flight 175) struck when they could reasonably be expected to start putting together the fact that this was an actual attack involving an indeterminent number of aircraft…16 min. after flight 11 first crashed for then unknown reasons.
Note its 9:10am and they detected that the flight was headed towards Washington but they were unaware it was a problem at this time, or possibly were aware but were distracted by other events…its unclear.
Ok, again its mass confusion. Appearently SOMEONE knew that the transponder had been shut off, but they have just had two planes crash in New York so they are most likely a bit distracted. By 9:24am they realize there is ANOTHER plane that has presumably been hijacked and they scramble fighters to cover DC.
9:28am and the FAA is trying to stop flights, pull down the flights that are in the air (hundreds of them) and stop incoming flights to the US from overseas. And now they realize that flight 93 has also been hijacked.
Ok, here is what I was talking about earlier. The FAA has compilied a list of 11 planes they THINK have been hijacked…but only 4 actually were. If we had shot down planes we THOUGHT were hijacked that would be quite a heavy death toll, no…thats assuming we COULD get to them which I’m starting to doubt now completely as I read more on this.
Flight 77 hits the Pentagon 14 min. after the FAA informs NORAD that its been hijacked…maybe 40 min. after they first detected a problem. Not sure as that part is sketchy.
Nearly 4000 planes in the air…thats a hell of a lot of planes to be worrying about. Just a quick note.
Ok, its been 29 min. since the FAA became aware that flight 93 had also presumably been hijacked. No indication that fighters were scrambled to intercept it or any of the other 7 planes the FAA thought might be hijacked. I conceed that you guys might have a small case here at least, though again I think that confusion and shock are the likely causes.
This is less than an hour after flight 175 confirmed that we were in fact under attack. To me this is an indication of a government moving at light speed compared to how it normally reacts. I’m sure many of you will disagree with me…but you would be those who have never actually worked for the government I’d guess.
38 min. after the FAA determined that the plane had been hijacked. Pretty brief time. No indication however that an attempt was made to intercept this plane or the other 7, again…which is curious.
-XT
p.s. Sorry for the length again…tried to be brief this time.
I feel this supports my contention that it was difficult to pick out the transponderless airliners among all the other radar returns. There’s an awful lot of sky up there, and they’re looking for a handful of blips that could be coming from anywhere.
The transponders are on board to make tracking an aircraft easier. Without them, it really is harder to spot them.
(again, emphasis added)
This is typical is ANY crisis - stuff that should be done doesn’t get done. In hindsight it looks really stupid, but maybe disaster planning should consider this sort of confusion into the mix under “human factors”.
No, dear, not “hundreds” of flights - THOUSANDS of aircraft are in the air and need to land.
Well, partly it’s a matter of who is cooperating. If you think a plane is hijacked order it to land, and if it doesn’t well, that’s a sign. Some airplanes were escorted all the way to the pavement by fighters towards the end of the morning. Intercepts did occur - just not as soon as we would have liked.
I suppose it’s even possible (and there was speculation at the time) that other teams of hijackers, seeing the jig was up, elected not to proceed and simply remained put in their seats until their planes landed - then melted into the crowds and escaped.
Which is a very scary thought.
Quibble: not "all US commercial air traffic" - they order EVERYONE out of the air. ALL the aircraft, without exception. Even medical flights and air ambulances.
Not that the command was very coherent. Here’s what actually went out in written form, and note that they did not bother to spellcheck it first:
My husband, who by this time had gotten out my spare aviation radio and was listening in to the traffic above Chicago and Indiana/Illinois, said that ATC was a LOT more blunt in what they were telling the pilots - at least one local guy was threatened with a shoot-down if he didn’t stop protesting and land. At the local airport they had much larger planes landing than they normally did, and the line personnel were going crazy trying to find a place to put them all. a lot of them wound up parked on the grass next to the runway. It was, to put it bluntly, a confused mess. A real wonder is that no one got killed during the ground-all-planes operation.
Was that 4000 airplanes - or just 4,000 passenger airliners?
It’s an important distinction because, you see, for every passenger airliner aloft at a given time there are usually five other airplanes (or more) also aloft. Passenger services is only about 20% of aviation. Which, if that number was referring to just passengers, means it was likely that there were 24,000 airplanes above the United States at the time. That’s a LOT of radar returns to search through, don’t you think?
Keep in mind that September 11, 2001 had excellent flying weather over the whole of the lower 48 states - a LOT of people were up there that morning. Heck, I almost called in “airsick” to work and went flying - which would have given us 24,001 airplanes aloft.
But even if it was a “mere” 4,000 - that’s not a small problem.
I agree - shock and confusion played a large role here.
Now, we can all sit around and look for scapegoats and potential heads-on-platters, or we can sit down and really look at what happened so next time something Really Really Bad happens we might do a better job.
They HAD to have known that Flight 93 was hijacked; there could be no other explanation for a message to air traffic control saying they had a bomb.
Well if the nation is KNOWN to be under attack, and the pencil-pushers are still calling the shots, something is seriously wrong. What do we have a military for if they get confused and can’t react swiftly when needed?
A close friend of mine was working in the FAA command center at Dulles that day, the one that oversees the regional ATCs. From his description of what was going on in there its not at all suprising that they took 20 minutes to confirm a hijacking. They weren’t even sure of the status of the missing planes (hijacked or not) until they saw it on CNN. The FAA is after all staff by normal people who deal with a few thousand well intentioned airliners in US airspace at any given moment. NORAD may have simulated things, but the civilians at the FAA who were the first line of contact could not have imagined what was happening.
OK, but this is starting the game clock a bit late, don’t you think? Not to mention, it gets to the crux of the matter: someone should have let FAA and NORAD in on what the PDB said.
So that when, at 8:43 a.m., when NORAD knew we had the beyond-unprecedented event of three simultaneous hijackings, it was time to scramble the fighter jets (and seek an order to clear the skies) then, not at nine-freakin’-ten a.m.
Maybe they still couldn’t have stopped Flight 77 from flying into the Pentagon. Maybe they could have. But one of several things the sleeping Administration cost us that summer was that 27 minutes.
And do you know for a fact that no one at either the FAA or NORAD was briefed in? And no, I don’t think I’m starting the game clock too late…when emergencies happen they don’t follow some neat path as you seem to be making it. They are dirty and messy. I think its pretty reasonable to put the times I’ve seen so far down to shock and confusion…and fragementary data. You and others obviously disagree.
Going into speculation mode on some of the other things you brought up: Perhaps the people that HAD been briefed in weren’t available at the time in the various control towers? Perhaps they were but they didn’t put the pieces together because they were recieving fragementary data? Or perhaps there was an oversight and the data wasn’t sent to the FAA or NORAD for whatever reason. If you have a cite that says that NORAD and the FAA did not (but should have) received the PDB you are talking about I’d like to see it…it will fit another piece of all this in for me anyway.
As far as I can tell, at 8:43am NORAD only knew for sure that one, possibly two jets MIGHT have been hijacked. Also, NORAD isn’t some monolithic agency, nor is the FAA. There were individual technicians or at most small groups of technicians working each individual crisis. Is there any indication that there was some kind of oversight going on at the time tracking the big picture? Again, things happened pretty damned fast and no one knew exactly what was happening until (IMO) the second plane slammed into the second WTC building. By that time its reasonable to assume that they had an inkling of what was happening. Even then its appearent there was mass confusion.
Well, from my own read I don’t think there was anything that could have been done to prevent 77 from hitting the Pentagon. On this issue I’m willing to cut the Administration, the FAA and NORAD some slack as I can understand the very human problems associated with such an emergency. And I truely believe that this is breaking down under partisan lines on this issue…if Gore had of been in office and the exact same events would have transpired (as I believe they would have) then the positions of nearly everyone in these threads would be reversed…except mine. I STILL would be saying that, to my mind, they did the best they could given the situation…and thats all anyone can do. The best they can do.
Not sure about NORAD, but the testimonity available to the 9/11 commission indicates the administrator of the FAA – as well as a lot of other people – wasn’t alerted at all:
“First of all, while it may be that Dick Clarke was informing you, many of the other people at the CSG-level, and the people who were brought to the table from the domestic agencies, were not telling their principals. Secretary Mineta, the secretary of transportation, had no idea of the threat. The administrator of the FAA, responsible for security on our airlines, had no idea. Yes, the attorney general was briefed, but there was no evidence of any activity by him about this. You indicate in your statement that the FBI tasked its field offices to find out what was going on out there. We have no record of that. The Washington field office international terrorism people say they never heard about the threat, they never heard about the warnings, they were not asked to come to the table and shake those trees. SACs, special agents in charge, around the country – Miami in particular – no knowledge of this.”
O.K., I’m going to use the most conservative estimate here, and say that sometime before 9:30, there should have been a slam dunk, impossible to be otherwise, knowledge that Flight 93 was hijacked. Why? Because the hijacker pressed the wrong button and radioed the tower that they had a bomb on board. No interpretation necessary. At 9:30, anyone in the country could have imagined what was happening, because it was already all over the news. Even the passenger ON Flight 93 knew they weren’t going home alive. If the passengers on an airplane were able to find out that multiple terrorist attacks were going on, how could the FAA possibly not know about it? That just can’t be. That’s 9:30 - they KNEW 93 was hijacked. According to NORADs timeline, 2 F-16s left Langley at 9:30, 129 miles away from the Pentagon, “yet when Flight 77 crashes at 9:37 they are still 105 miles away.” http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline.jsp? And the NORAD timeline says 12 mins/105 miles away from the Pentagon when it was hit. http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/2001/norad091801.html (That’s 525 mph I believe, but the F-16s top speed is 1500, maybe 1800 mph. Why were they only flying 1/3 throttle?) At 9:37, they still have 29 minutes to intercept Flight 93, now known to be hijacked, yet they stay and fly circles around DC. Flight 93 crashes in Shanksville PA, 124 miles from DC. Do the math - even if you believe that they only went 24 miles from Langley in 6 minutes (huh?) and still had to go 105+129=234 miles to intercept 93 before it crashed, that’s more than enough time.
Why on Earth would you order BOTH of your F-16s that are in the air to fly circles around DC when you KNOW that another hijacked plane is heading for you? Why wouldn’t you intercept it? Not to mention the F-15s that were already in the air somewhere. Sounds like a pretty colossal blunder to me. It turned out to be moot since Flight 93 crashed anyway, but that doesn’t excuse it.
I don’t know the normal policy or proceedure on this. SHOULD they have been alerted? Is it normal (prior to 9/11) to brief them in on PDB’s? Was the ‘evidence’ solid enough to brief them in? Anyway, continueing with your document:
Ok. So, Rice is making the case (and Gorelick seems to be agreeing) that the problem was that the various agencies didn’t work and play well together…didn’t share information readily between them. I’ve heard about stuff like this for years…this agency jealously guarding its little kingdom, that not liking to cooperate with this one. Hell, I’ve even seen it on TV where the FBI and local cops don’t share data and don’t get along, where FBI and CIA don’t get along well or share data, etc etc. Ok, so, there were (according to Rice) systemic problems in interagency cooperation and sharing. Gorelick asks Rice why they weren’t corrected…and Rice answers (reasonably IMO) that they only had 233 days and there were a lot of OTHER issues on their plate. Then she goes on to (sort of) admit that, possibly without 9/11 NO changes would have been made in any case, as inertia in the various agencies, custom, tradition, and simple stupid stuborn-ness (she didn’t say all that, but I’m building on the gist of what she was saying) would have prevented or at least interfered with radical changes to the system.
And this wasn’t some new problem we only just discovered. It wasn’t made by Bush. It wasn’t made by Clinton either, nor Bush I, nor Regan. This problem went back decades and was known for a LONG time. Why did no other president ever attempt to fix this problem? Well, I think Rice said it well “fact is that sometimes until there is a catastrophic event that forces people to think differently, that forces people to overcome all customs and old culture and old fears about domestic intelligence and the relationship, that you don’t get that kind of change.” To me this is totally plausable, knowing how government works. Until something tragic happens government is reluctant to move its bulk in new directions.
Now THATS a really good question that hasn’t been answered yet. The first 3 flights I think its reasonable to say that what was done was reasonable, considering how fast events moved and the shock and confusion. However, why weren’t fighters dispatched to at least intercept flight 93 and take a look at it or something?? After all, its conceivable that the target wasn’t DC or New York but, say the Sears building or something else. Anyone have a cite on whether fightes were dispatched, and if not (as seems to be the case) why they weren’t?
