Seventeen years ago today, two hijacked commercial airliners were flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. A third hijacked airliner was crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth went down in a field in Pennsylvania. The airliners were hijacked by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists believed to be involved with al-Qaeda.

The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks consisted of suicide attacks used to target symbolic U.S. landmarks.

2,996 People Lost Their Lives on This Fateful Day

AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 11

The First Jet Commandeered on September 11th

American Airlines Flight 11 is the plane that hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower. It was a Boeing 767-223ER on a scheduled flight from Boston to Los Angeles, with 81 passengers, nine flight attendants, and two pilots.

Flight 11 Route
This illustration from USA Today shows the alleged flightpath of Flight 11. Note that Albany is positioned about 50 miles south of its actual location.
More accurate flight path descriptions are found in NTSB reports published in 2006.

At 7:59 AM, Flight 11 took off from Boston’s Logan Airport.  At 8:13, the pilots last radio communication was made from the pilots to ground control: “twenty right American eleven.”    At 8:15 Boston Air Traffic Control began unsuccessful attempts to contact the pilots after the plane failed to respond to an order to climb.    At 8:20, Flight 11 stopped transmitting its transponder signal, and veered northward and departed dramatically from the westward heading of its planned route. The controllers concluded that the plane had probably been hijacked. At 8:24, the following transmission was reportedly received from Flight 11:

“We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you’ll be okay .. we are returning to the airport. Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet. Nobody move please we are going back to the airport .. don’t try to make any stupid moves.”

Neither of the pilots pressed the distress call button. At 8:28 controllers reportedly watched the plane make a 100-degree turn toward the south.  Presumably, Flight 11 continued south along the Hudson River until it reached the World Trade Center, though documentation of this is sparse given the lack of public information.

According to NORAD’s September 18 timeline, the FAA did not notify NORAD of the signs that Flight 11 was hijacked until 8:40, 25 minutes after the first signs of trouble.

Betty Ong
Flight attendant

At 8:21, phone calls from two flight attendants began. Betty Ong called Vanessa Minter at American Airlines reservations.  Flight attendant Madeline Sweeney called American Airlines ground manager Michael Woodward at Logan and spoke calmly to him for 25 minutes until the plane crashed. Supposedly the call was not recorded and Woodward took notes. Her first comment is “Listen, and listen to me very carefully. I’m on Flight 11. The airplane has been hijacked.” At 8:45, just before the crash, she said “I see the water. I see the buildings. I see buildings,” then after a pregnant pause, a quiet “Oh, my God!”.

At 8:46 Flight 11 collided with the North Tower. The NTSB places the crash time at 8:46:40. (There is no evidence for the assertions by some people, such as proponents of the bumble planes theory, that the North Tower was hit by something other than Flight 11.) Human remains recovered from Ground Zero were identified as belonging to Flight 11 victims.

Flight 175

The Second Jet Commandeered on September 11th

United Airlines Flight 175 is believed to be the plane that hit the World Trade Center’s South Tower. It was a Boeing 767-222 on a scheduled flight from Boston to Los Angeles, with 56 passengers, 7 flight attendants, and 2 pilots.

At 8:14 AM, Flight 175 took off from Boston’s Logan Airport, 16 minutes after its scheduled departure time.  At 8:41, a Flight 175 pilot reported that he had overheard a transmission (presumably from by-then-hijacked Flight 11):

“Ya we figured we’d wait to go to you center ah we heard a suspicious transmission on our departure out of Boston ah with someone ah, ah sound like someone sound like someone keyed the mike and said ah everyone ah stay in your seats.”

Shortly thereafter, the last radio communication was made from the pilots and air traffic control: “that’s ah cut out … did you copy that?”  At 8:42, Flight 175 veered off its planned course, and began flying south.  According to NORAD’s June 18 timeline and prior press reports, at 8:43 the FAA notified NORAD that the flight had been hijacked.   At 8:46, Flight 175 stopped transmitting its transponder signal.

Flight 175 apparently flew in a southwesterly direction as it crossed the Hudson River, continued into New Jersey until it was southwest of New York City, and then made a sharp turn to the northeast in order to approach the World Trade Center from the southwest. According to the NTSB Report on Flight 175, the plane started a turn to the northeast at 8:57 and descended from 28,000 feet as it approached the World Trade Center.

Peter Hanson family
Peter Hanson, his wife Sue Kim, and their daughter Christine Lee were killed when Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower.

There were reportedly two calls from passengers, and one from an unnamed flight attendant on Flight 175. Around 8:43 the father of passenger Peter Burton Hanson received a call from a man claiming to be his son and saying “Oh, my God! They just stabbed the airline hostess. I think the airline is being hijacked.”  At 8:58 passenger Brian Sweeney is said to have left a message for his wife “We’ve been hijacked, and it doesn’t look too good” and talked to his mother.

At 9:03, Flight 175 collided with the South Tower. The NTSB places the crash time at 9:02:40. (Some people question the identity of the plane, as Flight 175, despite evidence such as the identification of human remains at Ground Zero as belonging to Flight 175 victims.)

The impact was 43 minutes after Flight 11 first went off course, 21 minutes after Flight 175 went off course, and 17 minutes after the North Tower impact, yet the jet was not intercepted.

Flight 77
The Third Jet Commandeered on September 11th

American Airlines Flight 77 is the plane that is commonly believed to have crashed into the Pentagon. It was a Boeing 757-223 on a scheduled flight from Dulles to Los Angeles, with 58 passengers, four flight attendants, and two pilots.

At 8:20 AM, Flight 77 took off from Dulles International Airport, 10 minutes after its scheduled departure time. At 8:46, Flight 77 veered severely off course. At 8:50, the last radio communication was made from the pilots and air traffic control. At 8:56, the jet’s transponder was shut off.  The pilots’ last transmission was “ah direct FALMOUTH American seventy seven thanks.” No radio communications from the flight indicated distress.

The NTSB report on Flight 77 describes the plane’s maneuvers in detail. It began to turn to the south at 8:55, and by 9:00 it was headed east. Shortly thereafter it began to descend from its altitude of 35,000 feet. The autopilot was engaged and disengaged multiple times. At 9:29 the plane was 35 miles west of the Pentagon flying at 7,000 feet. At 9:34 it was about 3.5 miles west-southwest of the Pentagon and started a 330-degree descending right turn, bringing it to an altitude of about 2000 feet four miles southwest of the Pentagon.

According to NORAD’s September 18th timeline, the FAA didn’t notify NORAD that Flight 77 was a possible hijack until 9:24, thirty-four minutes after the loss of radio communications.   Press reports couch the notification as of a “suspected” hijacking despite reports that the plane was flying toward Washington, DC with its transponder off twenty-one minutes after both towers had been hit.

Flight attendant Renee A. May

There were two reported phone calls from Flight 77: a cell phone call from flight attendant Renee May to her mother; and a cell phone call from passenger Barbara Olson to her husband, US Solicitor General Ted Olson. Ted Olson related to Newsweek.

Barbara was calm and collected as she told him how hijackers had used box cutters and knifes to take control of the plane and had herded the passengers and crew to the back. “Ted, what can I do?” she asked him. “What can I tell the pilot?” Then, inexplicably, she got cut off.

At about 9:38 AM, a twin-engine jetliner flew into the Pentagon and exploded, according to  numerous eyewitnesses on the ground. The NTSB places the time of impact of Flight 77 into the Pentagon at 9:37:45. A Minnesota National Guard C-130 that had just taken off from nearby Andrews Air Force Base followed the jetliner in the seconds before it crashed. The pilot of the C-130, who described the plane as either a 757 or 767, provided the following account:

It was like coming up to an intersection. When air traffic control asked me if we had him in sight, I told him that was an understatement – by then, he had pretty much filled our windscreen. Then he made a pretty aggressive turn so he was moving right in front of us, a mile and a half, two miles away.

They told us to turn and follow that aircraft – in 20-plus years of flying, I’ve never been asked to do something like that. With all of the East Coast haze, I had a hard time picking him out.

The next thing I saw was the fireball. It was huge. I told Washington the airplane has impacted the ground. Shook everyone up pretty good. I told them the approximate location was close to the Potomac. I figured he’d had some in-flight emergency and was trying to get back on the ground to Washington National. Suddenly, I could see the outline of the Pentagon. It was horrible. I told Washington this thing has impacted the west side of the Pentagon.

Whether the aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon was Flight 77 is the subject of  much question and controversy. Human remains of the people onboard Flight 77 were identified at Dover, but there is no public evidence that places the bodies at the Pentagon crash site.

The impact was 83 minutes after Flight 11 first went off course, and 58 minutes after the North Tower impact, and 40 minutes after the South Tower impact, yet the jet was not intercepted as it flew over the (normally) most heavily protected airspace in the United States, and in the world.

Flight 93

At 8:42 AM, Flight 93 took off from Newark International Airport, 41 minutes after its scheduled departure time.  According to NORAD’s September 18th timeline, at 9:16, the FAA informed NORAD that the flight may have been hijacked. Several communications with air traffic controllers indicate that Flight 93 was hijacked at around 9:27.  At 9:30, the transponder signal ceased.   At about this time, the plane apparently reversed direction and began flying toward the capital.

There were numerous calls allegedly from Flight 93, most of them made using cell phones, and being relatively short. An exception was the call from passenger Todd Beamer on an Airfone, which was routed to Verizon supervisor Lisa Jefferson. Jefferson interviewed Beamer in detail in a conversation that would last from 9:45 until his famous last words before leading a passenger revolt: “Let’s Roll”.

Todd Beamer

The AP reported that at 9:58 a frantic passenger called from a bathroom and told operator Glenn Cramer that he had seen an explosion and smoke, and that the plane was “going down”.   Investigators believe the passenger was Edward Felt.

At 10:06 AM, Flight 93 was apparently shot down near Somerset, PA. The official story that it was flown into the ground as a result of a struggle to control the cockpit is contradicted by the reports of eyewitnesses on the ground, as well as the phone call attributed to Edward Felt.

The crash site, in a reclaimed strip mine, comprised a central debris field and several smaller debris fields some distance away. One of the engines was found over half a mile away from the main field.   Other debris fields were found 2, 3, and 8 miles away. This evidence is  virtually impossible to reconcile with the official story.

Roses to Remember

From the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, George Mironis Sr. places a white rose on the first letter of the last name or a middle initial for every victim who would have celebrated a birthday that day.

There is a binder at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum that holds the names of the nearly 3,000 victims, listed chronologically by birthday.

Every morning before the memorial and museum open to the public, a volunteer copies the page for that day from the binder and goes to a refrigerator to remove one white rose for every victim who would have celebrated a birthday that day. The stems are cut two inches below the leaves, the volunteer then walks out onto the plaza and places the rose on the first letter of the last name or a middle initial on the parapets surrounding the memorial pool. Two pictures are taken of the rose and name — one with the pool in the background, the other with the skyline. The Birthday Rose photos are emailed to family members.

George Mironis, a museum volunteer, asked for that morning responsibility on the days he works.

“I feel very, very honored doing that,” said Mironis, a North Bergen resident who escaped from the 48th floor of his North Tower office 15 years ago. He began working at the museum in April 2012 as a way to heal as well as honor the friends and co-workers he lost in the terrorist attacks.

The idea to place the roses came from a volunteer who is no longer at the museum.

“It was a very good suggestion,” said Mironis, who often fields visitors’ questions about the flowers.

He looks in the binder to the days when he is not scheduled to work. If there are 10 or more birthdays, “I tell the director, I’m going to come.”

On a recent Sunday morning, he traveled from North Bergen to downtown Manhattan, placed the roses then returned home to New Jersey and went to church, he said.

The roses are donated by Mikey Collarone of FloraTech, a downtown florist. Mikey Flowers, as he is known to many, was in the area the day of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and said he had run to help but had no medical training. After that experience, he worked to become an emergency medical technician. On Sept. 11, 2001, he watched the first plane hit as he was driving to work. He pulled over, grabbed his medical bag and ran to help.

“I experienced all the people coming out of the buildings and jumping and all of that stuff,” Collarone said. “When the South Tower had fallen I was trapped” in Winter Garden Atrium, “but I made it out.”

He stayed for about two weeks to help with medical recovery then started to feel the mental and emotional effects, he said. At a nearby firehouse, he sought out a counselor who recommended he go back to Ground Zero and “try to reinvent yourself as something else other than what you were doing and see what you can do,” as Collarone remembers it.

He ended up maintaining the pop-up public memorials for the Port Authority. Eventually he started cooking for the workers, bringing ziti and roast beef into the pit, he said.

“I wanted to help, always to help,” Collarone said.

So when a volunteer suggested flowers be placed to note victims’ birthdays, the museum staff went to Mikey Flowers and asked how much it would cost to buy the roses from him. Collarone didn’t hesitate.

“It was an opportunity for me just to give again,” he said. “I was being very selfish, because it made me feel good. … I don’t know how anybody can even accept money for a service for something like that.”

Twice a week he goes to the flower market and picks the perfect roses. They need to have a big head but thin stem. When he finds them, he returns to the store where he or his staff “conditions” them, cutting them short so the heads open up and making sure they are hydrated. He then brings them to the museum, where they wait in a refrigerator until a volunteer comes for them each morning.

Recently, Collarone received an email of thanks from a victim’s wife who had asked museum staff about the birthday roses. This is his way, he said, to continue helping.

“When I drive by, I can see from the road, the white roses on the names,” Collarone said. “I’m still connected Years Later…

New York Financial Center at dusk

The new downtown: Lower Manhattan reborn 17 years after 9/11

September 11, 2001 is a day that many will never forget. After the terrorist attacks on our World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many Americans’ lives were changed forever. Let’s remember that day, fill our hearts with strength and pay tribute to those who lost their lives on 9/11 with the below quotes and sayings:

1. If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.– Sandy Dahl, wife of pilot of Flight 93 Jason Dahl

2. Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost, a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11.– President Obama in a 2011 radio address.

3. Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.– President George W. Bush

4. Ten years have passed since a perfect blue sky morning turned into the blackest of nights. Since then we’ve lived in sunshine and in shadow, and although we can never unsee what happened here, we can also see that children who lost their parents have grown into young adults, grandchildren have been born and good works and public service have taken root to honor those we loved and lost.– New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, speaking at a memorial service in New York.

5. My father was the best person I have ever known and though he was taken from me on that day, nothing and no one will ever be able to take way the eight years and two days of my life that I shared with him. After my father died, and after I lost so much, I promised myself that I would never lose who I am as a person – the person that my father brought me up to be. … If you owe someone an apology, tell them you are sorry today. If someone asks for your forgiveness, forgive them. Start being the person you always wanted to be today and don’t waste your time worrying about tomorrow.- Mary Kate McErlean, whose father was killed on 9/11 when she was 8 years old.

6. Tonight, I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us, spoken through the ages in Psalm 23: ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.’– President George W. Bush on Sept. 11, 2001.

7. Remember the hours after September 11th when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran upstairs and risked their lives so that others might live; when rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon; when the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation’s Capitol; when flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us. – Senator John Kerry

8. You can be sure that the American spirit will prevail over this tragedy.– Colin Powell

9. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. – President George W. Bush on Sept. 11, 2001.

10. September 11 is one of our worst days but it brought out the best in us. It unified us as a country and showed our charitable instincts and reminded us of what we stood for and stand for. – Senator Lamar Alexander