Military air traffic controller full#

“We may have a hijack,” he tells another controller. Air traffic controllers in Indianapolis receive the last routine communication from AA 77.īottiglia notes that UAL 175 has changed its transponder and is climbing rapidly. New York Center/Bottiglia: “ United, do you read New York?”Ĩ:51 a.m.

Military air traffic controller full#

Bruce Barnett, operations manager at New York Center in Ronkonkoma, warns McCormick that a possibly hijacked flight is heading toward New York at full speed. Jeremy Powell: Is this real-world or exercise?īoston Center/Cooper: This is not an exercise, not a test.Ĭontrollers note that AA 11 has deviated from its flight path. Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS)/Sgt. Zalewski-who often speaks to pilots from Saudi Arabia and Egypt-recognizes Atta’s accent as Middle Eastern.Ītta: Don’t try to make any stupid moves.Īt this point, controllers reach out to their military contacts.īoston Center/Joseph Cooper: We need you guys to scramble some F-16s or something to help us out. Then controllers hear Mohamed Atta when the lead hijacker accidentally broadcasts a message meant for passengers on the air traffic control channel.Ītta: We have some planes. The hijackers turn off the transponders for AA 11. Dotted lines indicate the portions of the flights when cockpit-based transponders had been disabled. American Airlines Flight 77 leaves Dulles Airport, heading for Los Angeles.Ī graphic showing the flight trajectories of the four hijacked flights on September 11, 2001, along with those of US Air Force fighter jets that had been scrambled to intercept them. United Airlines Flight 175 takes off from Boston’s Logan Airport.Ĩ:20 a.m. Controllers chalk the lack of response up to multitasking. “I’m like, my god, maybe they’re drinking Dunkin’ Donuts coffee up there,” Zalewski recalls thinking. After guiding the flight’s initial climb, Zalewski can’t get a response from the pilots.īoston Center/Zalewski: American 11, climb, maintain flight level three-five-zero.īoston Center/Zalewski: American 11, Boston?īoston Center/Zalewski: American one-one, the American on this frequency, how do you read me? The plane had taken off from Boston’s Logan Airport at 7:59 a.m. Soon, he is trying to figure out what is happening with American Airlines Flight 11. In the windowless Nashua, New Hampshire bunker that houses Boston Center-the FAA facility that guides aircraft crisscrossing the skies above New England and much of New York-Peter Zalewski, a 20-year veteran, starts his shift at 7 a.m. READ MORE: 9/11 Commission Report 'We Need You Guys to Scramble Some F-16s' air traffic control officials experienced their profession’s most catastrophic day: Here’s a detailed look at how several key U.S. “This a dynamic event with details changing from moment to moment, from second to second,” McCormick told HISTORY. airspace and land all airborne planes-in response to dire, unprecedented events. Through shock and confusion, aviation professionals tasked with keeping America’s skies safe had to stay cool and make unthinkable decisions-to call in fighter jets, shut down U.S. Perpetrators deliberately flew three of those planes into iconic buildings in New York City and Washington, D.C., while a fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field before reaching its target. It was not a great day in air traffic control.Īs the morning progressed, four separate terror attacks unfolded in the skies, with hijackers using commercial aircraft as weapons. “A severe clear day means that you're going to have a great day in air traffic control,” says Michael McCormick, who oversaw all air traffic in the northeastern United States that day out of the Federal Aviation Administration’s New York Center in Ronkonkoma.

The weather in the northeastern United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was what air traffic controllers describe as “severe clear.” A high-pressure system had blown the previous day’s storms out to sea skies were an intense cobalt blue.