Since the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 was the worst attack on American soil in recent history, and we lost the lives of nearly 3,000 fellow Americans, let us take a look back at the important events of that terrible day.
From the Wikipedia list:
7:35: Atta and al-Omari board American Airlines Flight 11.
7:39: The rest of the American Airlines Flight 11 hijackers board the plane.
7:59: American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767, departs 14 minutes late from Logan International Airport, bound for Los Angeles, California. Five hijackers are aboard.
8:13: Flight 11 has its last routine communication with the FAA's air traffic control center in Boston.
8:14: Flight 11 fails to heed air traffic controller's instruction to climb to 35,000 feet.
8:14: United Airlines Flight 175, another fully-fueled Boeing 767, carrying 56 passengers and nine crew members, departs from Boston Logan airport, also bound for Los Angeles. Five hijackers are aboard.
8:19: Betty Ong, a flight attendant on Flight 11 [1] alerts American Airlines via an airphone, "“The cockpit is not answering, somebody’s stabbed in business class—and I think there’s Mace—that we can’t breathe—I don’t know, I think we’re getting hijacked.” She then tells of the stabbings of two flight attendants.
8:20: American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 with 58 passengers and six crew, departs from Washington Dulles International Airport in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, Virginia, for Los Angeles. Five hijackers are aboard.
8:42: United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757, takes off with 37 passengers and seven crew members from Newark International Airport (now Newark Liberty International Airport), bound for San Francisco International Airport, following a 40-minute delay due to congested runways. Four hijackers are aboard. Its flight path initially takes it close to the World Trade Center before moving away westwards.
8:42 to 8:46 (approx.): Flight 175 is hijacked.
8:44: Flight attendant Amy Sweeney, aboard Flight 11, reports by telephone to American Airlines Flight Services Office in Boston, "Something is wrong. We are in a rapid descent... we are all over the place." A minute later, she is asked to describe what she sees out the window. She responds, "I see the water. I see the buildings. I see buildings..." After a short pause, she reports, "We are flying low. We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low." Seconds later she says slowly, "Oh my God...OH MY GOD!" The call ends with a burst of very loud, sustained static.
8:46: Two F-15 fighter jets are scrambled from Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts, intended to intercept Flight 11. Because Flight 11's transponder is off, United States Air Force pilots do not know the direction they should fly to meet the jetliner. NEADS spends the next several minutes watching their radar screens in anticipation of Flight 11 returning a radar contact.
8:46:40: Flight 11 crashes at roughly 490 mph (790 km/h or 425 knots) into the north face of the North Tower (1 WTC) of the World Trade Center, between floors 93 and 99. (Many early accounts gave times between 8:45 and 8:50). The aircraft enters the tower mostly intact. It plows to the building core, severing all three gypsum-encased stairwells, dragging combustibles with it. A massive shock wave travels down to the ground and up again. The combustibles and the remnants of the aircraft are ignited by the burning fuel. As the building lacks a traditional full cage frame and depends almost entirely on the strength of a narrow structural core running up the center, fire at the center of the impact zone is in a position to compromise the integrity of all internal columns. People below the severed stairwells start to evacuate—no one above the impact zone is able to do so.
8:46 to 10:28: At least 100 people (some accounts say as many as 250), primarily in the North Tower, trapped by fire and smoke in the upper floors, jump to their deaths. There is some evidence that large central portions of the floor near the impact zone in the North Tower collapsed soon after the plane hit, leading many to believe general collapse was underway.[citation needed] One person at street level, firefighter Daniel Suhr, is hit by a jumper and dies. No form of airborne evacuation is attempted as smoke is too dense for a successful landing on the roof of either tower and New York City lacks helicopters equipped for horizontal rescue.
8:50 to 8:54 (approx.): Hijacking begins on Flight 77.
8:51: A flight controller at the FAA's New York Center notices that Flight 175 had changed its transponder code twice four minutes earlier; he tries to contact the flight.
8:52: A flight attendant aboard Flight 175 calls a United Airlines office in San Francisco, reporting that the flight had been hijacked, both pilots had been killed, a flight attendant had been stabbed, and the hijackers were probably flying the plane.
9:00: Lee Hanson in Connecticut receives a second call from his son Peter, aboard Flight 175: "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." The call ends abruptly, as Lee Hanson hears a woman scream.
9:03:11: Flight 175 crashes at about 590 mph (950 km/h) into the south face of the South Tower (2 WTC) of the World Trade Center, banked between floors 78 and 85.[2] By this time, several media organizations are covering the first plane crash—millions see the impact live. Parts of the plane leave the building from its east and north sides, falling to the ground six blocks away. Some mistakenly believe that a second explosion has occurred in the North Tower due to the North Tower's obstruction of the South Tower from certain camera angles. They are unaware that a second plane has struck the South Tower. A massive evacuation begins in the South Tower below its impact zone. One of the stairwells in the South Tower remains unblocked from the top to the bottom of the tower, but is filled with smoke. This leads many people to mistakenly go upwards towards the roof for a rooftop rescue that never comes. The impact severs communication with several television and radio broadcast towers at the WTC; local station WPIX's feed freezes on an image of the second impact which is all the station broadcasts until alternate transmitters are set up hours later. CNN's headline now reads "Second plane crashes into World Trade Center." The three major broadcast networks have interrupted their morning shows and are speculating on whether they are witnessing a terrorist attack or some sort of very rare accident.
9:23: Flight 93 receives warning message text from United Airlines flight dispatcher: "Beware any cockpit intrusion- Two a/c [aircraft] hit World Trade Center."
9:28: Hijackers storm the cockpit on Flight 93 and take over the flight. The entry of the hijackers is overheard by flight controllers at Cleveland.
9:35: Flight 93 reverses direction over Ohio and starts flying eastwards.
9:37:46: Flight 77 crashes into the western side of the Pentagon and starts a violent fire. The section of the Pentagon hit consists mainly of newly renovated, unoccupied offices. All 64 people on board are killed, as are 125 Pentagon personnel.
9:45: United States airspace is shut down. No civilian aircraft are allowed to take off, and all aircraft in flight are ordered to land at the nearest airport as soon as possible. All international flights headed for the U.S. are redirected to Canada. Transport Canada, the Canadian transportation agency, also closes down its airspace. The FAA announces that civilian flights are suspended until at least noon September 12, while Transport Canada gives similar orders, but until further notice, to take in diverted U.S.-bound international flights, launching the agency's "Operation Yellow Ribbon." The groundings last until September 14. Military and medical flights as well as Con Air flights continue. This is the fourth time all commercial flights in the U.S. have been stopped, and the first time a suspension was unplanned. All previous suspensions were military-related (Sky Shield I-III), from 1960 to 1962. Many newspapers (including The New York Times) mistakenly print that this is the first time flights have been suspended. This was also the first time commercial flights in Canada have been stopped.
9:57: Passenger revolt begins on Flight 93.
9:59:04: The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses, 55 minutes 51 seconds after the impact of Flight 175. Its destruction is viewed and heard by a vast television and radio audience. As the roar of the collapse goes silent, tremendous gray-white clouds of pulverized concrete and gypsum rush through the streets. Most observers think a new explosion or impact has produced smoke and debris that now obscures the South Tower. When the wind finally clears the immediate space, it is plain to see that the tower is gone.
10:03:11: United Airlines Flight 93 is crashed by its hijackers 80 miles (129 k) southeast of Pittsburgh in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.[7] Later reports indicate that passengers had learned about the World Trade Center and Pentagon crashes on cell phones and at least three were planning on resisting the hijackers; the resistance was confirmed by Flight 93's cockpit voice recording, on which the hijackers are heard making their decision to down the plane before the passengers succeed in breaching the cockpit door. The 9/11 Commission believed that Flight 93's target was either the United States Capitol building or the White House in Washington, D.C.
Reports stated an eyewitness saw a white plane resembling a fighter jet circling the site minutes after the crash. This is partially true, but it was in fact a private plane that was asked by air-traffic control to check and describe Flight 93's crash site.[citation needed]
10:10: Part of the Pentagon collapses.
10:28:25: The North Tower of the World Trade Center collapses. Due to the destruction of the gypsum-encased stairwells on the impact floors (most skyscraper stairwells are encased in reinforced concrete), no one above the impact zone in the North Tower survives. The Marriott Hotel, located at the base of the two towers, is also destroyed. The second collapse is also viewed live on television and heard on radio. The North Tower collapses 1 hour 41 minutes 51 seconds after the impact of Flight 11.
This is only a partial list of events that day. For a more complete list, click here.
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The 911 Timeline
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