As they had in the case of Flight 11, ground staff were to recall odd details about the passengers from the Middle East. Two Arabs bungled the boarding process—one of them boarded using his companion’s boarding card, and a new one had to be printed. One man asked twice in poor English if he could purchase a ticket, when he already had one. Two waiting passengers, possibly the same man and a companion, behaved strangely at the gate ticket counter. They stood in line, only to walk away on reaching the counter, line up again, and walk away again. In all, they went through the process three times. They seemed nervous, “looked down at the ground as if they were attempting to avoid eye contact.” Nevertheless, they both eventually boarded successfully.
Captain Saracini took United Flight 175 into the air before 8:15 and climbed steadily to 31,000 feet. Twenty- three minutes into the flight, a controller looking for the missing Flight 11 asked him and his copilot to see if they could spot it. They did, and were told to stay out of its way. Three minutes later, as 175 entered New York airspace, Saracini came on the air to report to controller Dave Bottiglia:
S
ARACINI
: We figured we’d wait to go to you[r] Center. Ah, we heard a suspicious transmission on our departure out of Boston, ah … sound[ed] like someone keyed the mike and, ah, said, ah, “Everyone, stay in your seats.”
B
OTTIGLIA:
Oh, okay. I’ll pass that along …
Saracini had probably decided to wait a while before reporting the suspect transmission from Flight 11 because—surmising that it indicated a hijack—he wanted to avoid being overheard. United passengers using headsets could listen in on the cockpit chatter simply by listening to Channel 9—it was a form of entertainment. It is possible that on Saracini’s plane, unbeknownst to him, some of those listening in were the men planning to hijack the aircraft.
Whether or not they overheard the cockpit chatter, hijackers struck Flight 175 within five minutes of the captain’s report about the sinister transmission. At 8:47 the transponder code—the signal that identifies an aircraft—changed twice in the space of a minute. Four minutes later, when ground control asked the pilots to readjust the transponder, there was no response. In the same minute, the airplane deviated from its assigned altitude, climbed, and then—near Allentown, Pennsylvania—began a turn to the southeast. Pilots Saracini and Horrocks were silent now.
Others on board found a way to communicate. Five minutes after the change of course, the phone rang at Starfix, a United facility in California assigned to handle crew calls about minor maintenance problems. The mechanic who took the call, Marc Policastro, found himself talking to a male flight attendant aboard Flight 175, probably Robert Fangman. He said the flight had been hijacked, the pilots killed.
On another phone, a passenger named Peter Hanson got through to his parents’ home in Connecticut. He described the hijack, speaking in low tones as his father made notes. “I think they’ve taken over the cockpit,” Hanson said. “An attendant has been stabbed. Someone else up front may have been killed. The plane is making strange moves.”
On the ground at New York Center, the silence from 175 by now had controller Dave Bottiglia thoroughly alarmed. He alerted an air traffic manager, Mike McCormick. The turn Flight 175 had been making became a U-turn, until the plane was pointed directly at New York City. “We might,” Bottiglia heard McCormick say, “have multiple hijacks.”
At 8:58, another phone began ringing. Passenger Brian Sweeney, the Defense Department consultant on the plane, was trying to reach his wife, Julie, in Massachusetts. She was a teacher, already at school, so he left a voice message. “Hey Jules, it’s Brian. I’m on a plane and it’s hijacked, and it doesn’t look good. I just wanted to let you know that I love you, and I hope to see you again. If I don’t, please have fun in life. Please be happy. Please live your life. That’s an order.”
Sweeney, a former Navy lieutenant who had taught at the Top Gun Fighter Weapons School, did get through to his mother, Louise—with a very different sort of message. He and other passengers, he said, were thinking of storming the cockpit. “I might have to hang up quickly, we’re going to try to do something about this.”
Peter Hanson, meanwhile, managed another call to tell his father, who again made notes: “It’s getting bad, Dad … 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 … The plane is making jerky movements … I think we are going down … Don’t worry, Dad. If it happens, it’ll be very fast.”
Hanson Sr. had heard a woman’s scream in the background. His son said, “My God! My God! …” Then the call ended.
It was 9:02. Ground controllers north of New York were gradually catching up with the reality. Boston Center told New England Region that the tape of the Flight 11 hijacker showed that he had spoken of “planes, as in plural.” Also: “It sounds like—we’re talking to New York—that there’s another one aimed at the World Trade Center.”
Even as they talked, controllers at New York Center were watching the radar blip that was Flight 175. “He’s not going to land,” one man exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “He’s going in …”
THE BOEING 767 roared in from New Jersey, looking for a moment as though it might collide with the Statue of Liberty. It rocked from side to side, then the nose pointed down. Fire marshal Steven Mosiello, already at the Trade Center, heard rather than saw it as it came ever “closer … louder and louder.” The
On the 81st floor of the South Tower, Fuji Bank official Stanley Praimnath was at his desk, talking on the phone. Praimnath would recall how, in mid-sentence, for no apparent reason, “I just raised my head and looked to the Statue of Liberty. And what I see is a big plane coming towards me … I am looking at an airplane coming, eye level, eye contact, toward me—giant gray airplane … with a red stripe … I am still seeing the letter U on its tail, and the plane is bearing down on me. I dropped the phone and I screamed and I dove under my desk.”
Three floors up, on the 84th, Brian Clark of Euro Brokers had been consoling a woman colleague distraught at the sight of people jumping from the North Tower. He escorted her to the door of the ladies’ room, on the far side of the building, when: “
It was 9:03. United Flight 175 had struck the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors, at an angle. Clark’s chivalrous action in helping a distressed colleague had saved his own life. It had taken him to the side of the building furthest from the point of impact. Praimnath found himself, still under his desk, covered in debris, peering out at what looked like part of the airplane’s wing. He began shouting for help and was soon extricated by Clark, who had headed down a passable stairwell. The two were to make the long descent to the ground and safety.
Many others who had been working in their part of the tower had died instantly. Those who survived the initial impact and headed up, rather than down, would not survive.
Fifty minutes had elapsed since the terror began.
For those fighting for their lives in the towers, those rushing to the rescue, those charged with orchestrating the air traffic still in the sky, and those responsible for the defense of the United States, all was now confusion and chaos—against a drumbeat of breaking news, the biggest, most stunning news in the lifetimes of almost everyone it reached.
FOUR
CNN HAD THE BREAK. ON THE HEELS OF A REPORT ABOUT MATERNITY wear, Carol Lin cut into a commercial within two minutes of the first strike.
“This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot … We have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center … Clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan.”
On
