Posted on 08/13/2002 12:18:06 AM PDT by kattracks
BOSTON — Regional air traffic controllers yesterday offered a detailed chronology of Sept. 11, when two planes were hijacked from Boston, but refused to say more about what actually happened on the planes.
American Flight 11 took off without incident at 8 a.m. and after it reached 11,000 feet was monitored by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Boston Center in Nashua, N.H. United Flight 175 left 14 minutes later.
There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary, as the American pilot acknowledged he had clearance to take the plane to 29,000 feet.
But then, when given permission to climb to 35,000 feet, communications fell silent, and the “blip” on the radar screen that was Flight 11 went blank.
“We considered it at that time to be a possible hijacking,” air traffic manager Glenn Michael recalled.
FAA controllers held news conferences in Boston, New York and Washington yesterday, giving chronological accounts of the terrorist attacks and how they forced an unprecedented shutdown of the U.S. skies.
Representatives from Boston and the Boston Center, one of 20 FAA facilities nationally that monitor long-distance flights, spoke at Logan Airport. They refused to answer questions about what happened on board — such as how the terrorists got control — citing the ongoing investigation.
They said there was nothing unusual about United Flight 175 while it was in this region’s air space.
In fact, controllers in Nashua asked the pilot on Flight 175 if he could see Flight 11. He confirmed Flight 11 was still in the air, at about 29,000 feet.
Soon after, both flights were out of air space controlled by Nashua — and were crashed into the World Trade Center twin towers.
After the first crash, flights from the Boston area to New York were grounded. After the second, all air traffic from Boston was halted.
“Once it became obvious what was actually transpiring, air traffic controllers reacted much like Americans reacted across the entire nation, with shock, with disbelief, with just stunned surprise that such acts could occur,” said Joseph Davies, air traffic manager at Logan.
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