![]() Hart addressed other board members and staff at a meeting last October, he offered scathing indictments of those who contributed to the crash of a Hawker jet at Akron, Ohio. "I just held it in my hand, and somehow that stopped everything.When NTSB Chairman Christopher A. But in the dream, I didn't harm the plane," she said. It was a pool of gel, and I reached into the radar scope to stop that flight. "The one that comes to mind most, dreaming of a green pool in front of me. In her dreams, events unfold differently. "I've sat up straight in bed many times, reliving it, reseeing it, rehearing it," she said. "They certainly could have had the White House if they had seen it."Īfter the attacks, O'Brien had nightmares. "I've been down to the Pentagon and stood on the hillside and imagined where, according to what I saw on the radar, that flight would have come from, and I think that they came eastbound and because sun was in their eyes that morning, and because the White House was beyond a grove of trees, I think they couldn't see it. ![]() Over the last 2 ½ years, O'Brien has spent a lot of time re-living that day. And yet they did it with professionalism and skill." "It was something that had never been contemplated, something that had never been practiced. "The air traffic controllers achieved the impossible," said John Carr, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. "Daggonnit, nobody was going to take any more, not if we could help it." According to Federal Aviation Administration radar records, almost 5,000 aircraft were safely guided to ground in under two hours. "It was a sense of urgency, it was a sense of protectiveness," she said. O'Brien said she and her fellow controllers remained calm amid the crisis. O'Brien recalled, "The order came to get every plane in the sky in the United States … to get them on the ground." United 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field, 125 miles from Washington, D.C.īut with the sky still full of planes, no one knew and no one knows to this day, if more planes were about to be hijacked. "At about 9:36, Cleveland Center asked Command Center specifically whether someone had requested the military to launch fighter aircraft to intercept United 93." Just after 10:03 a.m. Please remain quiet."Ī controller in Cleveland tried in vain to reach United 93.ĭuring this week's testimony 9/11 panel member John Farmer detailed the exchanges between the Cleveland command center and FAA headquarters. "There is a bomb on board and are going back to the airport, and to have our demands. Would like you all to remain seated," said a voice, believed to be that of Jarrah. Two minutes later, a fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93 out of Newark, N.J., sent out its own chilling transmission, likely the voice of hijacker Ziad Jarrah. "And then the Washington National controllers came over our speakers in our room and said, 'Dulles, hold all of our inbound traffic. And your heart is just beating out of your chest waiting to hear what's happened," said O'Brien. ![]() "We lost radar contact with that aircraft. This must be one of our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol our capital, and to protect our president, and we sat back in our chairs and breathed for just a second," said O'Brien.īut the plane continued to turn right until it had made a 360-degree maneuver. In the room, it was almost a sense of relief. ![]() And I had it in my mouth to say, three, and all of a sudden the plane turned away. Just after 9:03 a.m., United 175 crashed into the World Trade Center's South Tower.Īir traffic controller Danielle O'Brien was at the Dulles Tower outside Washington, D.C., that morning. I need a direction, a destination."Īmerican Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower of New York's World Trade Center seconds later, just as controllers realized a second jet out of Boston had also been hijacked, United Airlines Flight 175.Īs the controllers observed United 175's rapid descent, the radar data terminated over lower Manhattan. "I don't know where I'm scrambling these guys to. But NEADS did not know where to send the alert fighter aircraft," Azzarello said, reading a quote from the NEADS controller. ![]() "F-15 fighters were ordered scrambled at 8:46 from Otis Air Force Base. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to - we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, to help us out." The Northeast Air Defense (NEADS) was unsure whether the call was some sort of drill or a real-world event.Īzzarello recounted the timeline of events. Boston air traffic controllers alerted the military regarding the hijacking in progress three minutes later. ![]()
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