The 25th Anniversary of 9/11, Part 1: ‘It’s Outta Control.’ ‘What is?’

Free for nonsubscribers By Scott Hamilton Sept. 7, 2026, Leeham News and Analysis: It has been said that those alive in 1941 and 1945 remember where they were when Pearl Harbor was bombed and President Franklin D. Roosevelt died. I certainly remember where I was when the news was announced of the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. So it was when I heard the news of the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. This date subsequently became known simply as 9/11. Friday is the 25th Anniversary of airline events that changed commercial aviation, and the world, forever. In a series of articles, LNA is recapping what happened on 9/11, its impact on the airline industry and on Airbus and Boeing. I am also in Gander, Newfoundland, this week. Gander is where 38 trans-Atlantic flights were diverted once US skies were closed by the federal government to all but military, law enforcement, and rescue operations. September 11, 2001, was a beautiful day throughout the United States. In the Seattle suburb of Sammamish, I was up by 7:30 a.m., checking email and news headlines on America Online (AOL), then a much more dominant service than it is today. I saw a headline that referred to airplanes, the World Trade Center, and terrorists. Pulling the story up, I read what it said and didn’t believe it. The audacity of it all! Surely a hacker had gotten into the system and was perpetrating a hoax. Tom Mahr, a good friend and a longtime member of the airline industry, was an AOL Instant Messenger buddy. He popped up with the message, “It’s outta control.” “What is?” I replied. I still didn’t get it. Tom quickly realized that I didn’t know what was going on (despite the AOL news story on the screen staring me in the face) and urged me to turn on CNN. At that moment, my mother called from Wheaton, Illinois. It was 7:45 a.m. Like the rest of the nation, I spent the next several days glued to the television set, disbelieving even as I watched the footage of the United Airlines 767 hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center, even as the buildings collapsed, even as the Pentagon went up in flames. American Airlines and United Airlines Boeing 767-200ERs were commandeered by terrorists and flown into the 110-story North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, New York City. An American Boeing 757 was commandeered and flown into the Pentagon. A United 757 was commandeered and turned toward Washington, D.C., after take-off from Boston. Its target was either the Capitol or the White House—it was never determined which. Passengers aboard flight 93 used the on-board Skyphones to call relatives upon the hijacking. It was through these calls that they learned of the attacks on New York and Washington. Passengers rebelled and attacked the cockpit door in an attempt to retake control of the airplane. The hijackers instead crashed the 757 at high speed near Shanksville, PA. The horror of it all, and what airline employees must have been going through during the hijackings, was unimaginable. Some pilots and cabin crew were murdered in the hijackings. Those pilots who weren’t killed were removed from the cockpits and forced into the cabins. In 2001, the protocol for hijackings was for the crews to cooperate. Subsequently, not only were crews trained to resist, but passengers also often assisted crews in restraining those who appeared to be a threat to the airplane. The families of the passengers on the four airliners who would be distraught under circumstances surrounding an “ordinary” crash must have gone through a special kind of hell when they realized that their family members had all been murdered. The same was true for the relatives of the Trade Center and Pentagon victims. Because the crashes on 9/11 became criminal investigations from the minute the realization dawned that these were terrorist acts, information about what had happened became tightly controlled. The cockpit voice- and flight-data recorders on three of the four flights were destroyed by intense fires. The recorders from United flight 93, the Pennsylvania flight, were recovered but impounded by law enforcement authorities. Still, a fair amount of information emerged to paint a grim picture of what happened on the airplanes. We know details from cell and air phone calls placed by passengers to people on the ground, with the heroics of the passengers of Flight 93 gaining the most attention. The first news of the hijackings came from American Airlines flight 11, from Boston to Los Angeles, when flight attendant Betty Ong called American’s flight operations center. She reported that four hijackers had taken over the plane. There is a gripping—and chilling—account of the hijackings and 9/11 in the book, Body of Secrets. The book is about the then-super-secret National Security Agency, which intercepts and collects intelligence data worldwide. In a chapter devoted to the events of 9/11, the book states that all of the hijackers on flight 11, the American jet that crashed into the World Trade Center, were seated in first class. (The 9/11 Commission stated that two hijackers were seated in first class, while the others were positioned throughout the forward cabin.) The two American pilots were quickly killed as the hijackers took over the airplane. This scenario was repeated on American’s flight 77 (which slammed into the Pentagon), United’s flight 175 (another Trade Center missile), and United’s flight 93. American and United officials immediately moved to ground their aircraft as events unfolded, even before U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta issued an order to ground all planes in U.S. airspace. A few hints of what might have happened emerged in the days after the grounding. A pair of Middle Eastern men was detained on a train from St. Louis after their flight had been grounded; they were found to have thousands of dollars in cash and box cutters in their possession. A Delta Air Lines 767 that was sent in for maintenance was found to have a box cutter taped underneath a first-class seat. Information emerged that perhaps the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco were targets. One source told me that maybe as many as 21 airplanes were to be hijacked that fateful day. Al Qaeda’s plans for 9/11, whether confined to four aircraft or as many as 21, while audacious, were not the first terrorist plans to target civilian airliners. In 1995, authorities broke up a plot to hijack at least three and perhaps as many as 12 U.S. airliners and blow them up over the Pacific. U.S. airspace was shut down for four days while emergency security procedures were adopted. When flights resumed, America was still reeling from the attacks. The impacts on airlines and on Airbus and Boeing were encapsulated in one word: Catastrophic. The overarching question was, how catastrophic would the impact be? This account is an edited excerpt from the book, The Rise and Fall of Boeing and the Way Back, by Scott Hamilton. Additional reporting is included above. Part 2 examines the impact on the airlines. Another argument for remote, ATC, pilot control inhibit and autoflight on commercial airliners. Like the Garmin autopilot landing system. Then it has to be decied when activated ( an unstable approach, minor altitude overshoot?) In memory of Kathleen Nicosia, AA11 lead flight attendant on September 11. I was working in the airline operations center on this morning and we watched events unfolding in real time and the national airspace shutdown. You are correct in that it was primarily American Airlines who made the quick decision to have all their flights land immediately to any nearest airport, the FAA wasn’t that quick. Another personal note, my then 24 year old niece was working in the north tower for Morgan Stanley that morning, she made it out thankfully due to the wits of Rick Rescorla, head of security for MS and had made plans for just this event after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 – he predicted correctly that they would try again. Rescorla died in the collapse. Never Forget! See this about the Morgan Stanley hero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla See this about the Morgan Stanley hero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla I was playing beach volleyball late at night against a United crew down under. People started whispering & tv’s popped up staying on for the rest of the night. CNN reporters fell silent. Surreal. I was working at the former Kelly AFB. My main memory was relief at not going through enhanced entry requirements that were going next door at Lacklane