American Airlines Flight 11

American Airlines Flight 11 was an American domestic passenger flight from Logan International Airport in Boston to Los Angeles International Airport in California that was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on the morning of September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. The hijacked airliner was deliberately crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, killing all 92 people aboard the flight, and resulting in the deaths of more than 1,300 people within the skyscraper's top 18 stories, in addition to causing the deaths of numerous people below the trapped floors.

The hijacking and crash of Flight 11 resulted in the greatest number of fatalities of the four hijacked flights, both aboard the aircraft and on the ground, and is the deadliest aviation incident in history. The aircraft involved was a Boeing 767 operating American Airlines' daily scheduled morning transcontinental service from Boston Logan International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport.

The airplane left the runway at 07:59. Less than 15 minutes after takeoff, the hijackers injured two flight attendants, murdered one passenger, and breached the cockpit while forcing the passengers and crew to the rear of the aircraft. The assailants attacked both pilots, allowing lead hijacker Mohamed Atta to take over the controls. Air traffic controllers suspected that the flight was in distress because the crew became non-responsive. They realized that the plane had been hijacked when Atta's announcement to the hostages was accidentally transmitted to air traffic control instead of through the aircraft's PA system. Also, two flight attendants were able to contact American Airlines and pass along information relevant to the situation, including casualties suffered by the crew and passengers.

Atta flew the hijacked plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center from floors 93 through 99 at 08:46 local time. The impact was witnessed by people on the streets of New York City as well as the nearby state of New Jersey. The media quickly began reporting on the incident and speculated that the crash had been an accident. Seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the World Trade Center's South Tower at 09:03, dispelling any notion it was accidental.

The damage caused by the plane and the fires ignited by its crash caused the North Tower to collapse at 10:28 that morning, resulting in hundreds of additional casualties. While the recovery effort at the World Trade Center site led to the discovery and identification of body fragments from certain individuals who boarded Flight 11, many have not been identified.

Flight

The aircraft involved in the hijacking was a Boeing 767-200ER, with registration number N334AA built and delivered in 1987. The capacity of the aircraft was 158 passengers, 9 in first class, 30 in business class and 119 in economy class. The September 11 flight carried 81 passengers and 11 crew members. This was a light load at 58 percent capacity, but higher than the average load factor for Flight 11 on Tuesday mornings of 39 percent in the months preceding September 11.

The crew members were Captain John Ogonowski (age 50; a former Air Force transport pilot), First Officer Thomas McGuinness Jr. (age 42) (a former Navy fighter pilot), purser Karen Martin and flight attendants Barbara Arestegui, Jeffrey Collman, Sara Low, Kathleen Nicosia, Betty Ong, Jean Roger, Dianne Snyder, and Amy Sweeney.

McGuiness picked up the assignment for that flight the day before around 3:00 pm, after celebrating his birthday with his family on September 10. Another pilot, Steve Scheibner, was originally scheduled for the flight.

All 92 people on board were killed, including Frasier creator and executive producer David Angell, his wife Lynn Angell, actress Berry Berenson, Akamai Technologies co-founder Daniel Lewin, and astronaut Charles Edward Jones. Uruguayan-Australian cyclist and radio presenter Alberto Domínguez was also on board Flight 11. Additionally, seven TJX employees were heading on a business trip for a store opening. The oldest victim of the September 11 attacks, Robert Grant Norton (aged 85, born May 11, 1916) was on Flight 11.

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane had been scheduled to be on the flight but missed it due to a hangover the night before and his travel agent mistakenly telling him that the flight left at 08:15 instead of 07:45. Actor Mark Wahlberg was also scheduled to be on the flight but changed his plans and canceled his ticket the day before. Actress Leighanne Littrell had also previously been booked on the flight but, like Wahlberg, changed her plans.

Hijacking

"Okay, my name is Betty Ong. I'm [Flight Attendant] Number 3 on Flight 11. Our Number 1 got stabbed. Our purser is stabbed. Nobody knows who stabbed who and we can't even get up to business class right now because nobody can breathe. And we can't get to the cockpit, the door won't open."- Flight attendant Betty Ong to the American Airlines emergency line.

The 9/11 Commission estimated that the hijacking began at 08:14 when the pilots stopped responding to requests from the Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center (Boston ARTCC). At 08:13:29, as the aircraft was passing over central Massachusetts at 26000 ft, the pilots responded to a request from Boston ARTCC to make a 20-degree turn to the right.

At 08:13:47, Boston ARTCC told the pilots to ascend to a cruising altitude of 35000 ft, but received no response. At 08:16, the aircraft leveled off at 29000 ft and shortly thereafter deviated from its scheduled path.

At 08:17:59, flight controllers at Boston Center heard a brief, unknown sound on the radio frequency used by Flight 11 and other nearby flights, a noise that was later described as sounding like a scream. Boston ARTCC made multiple attempts to talk to Flight 11 without reply. The commission believes that the hijackers were in absolute control of the aircraft by 08:20, six minutes after launching their assault.

The flight's Mode-C transponder signal was then switched off by someone in the cockpit at 08:21. At 08:23 and 08:25, Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) tried to contact the flight. The first message read, "Good morning, ATC looking for you on 135.32"; the other read, "Please contact Boston Center ASAP. They have lost radio contact and your transponder signal." Flight 11 did not reply.

Crash

"Battalion 1 to Manhattan. We have a number of floors on fire. It looked like the plane was aiming towards the building."Chief Joseph Pfeifer, making the first official report after seeing the crash with his own eyes.

At 8:37 a.m., Flight 11 began a rapid descent of 3,200 feet per minute toward New York City, gradually losing speed. Three minutes before impact, Atta completed his final turn toward Manhattan, flying south over the city in the direction of the World Trade Center. At 08:46, flight attendant Amy Sweeney panicked that the plane was "flying way too low" as Atta deliberately crashed into the North Tower.

The airplane, traveling about 440 mph and loaded with around 10000 U.S.gal of jet fuel, struck the skyscraper's northern façade between floors 93 and 99, its nose hitting the 96th floor.

Hundreds were killed instantly, including everyone still alive on the aircraft and numerous workers and visitors in the North Tower. Many who had been outside of the path of the crashing airliner were incinerated as its fuel exploded.

Studies suggest that as many as 1,426 people may have been present on the top 18 floors of the North Tower when it was struck almost midway into its central core. The core housed three stairwells (A, B and C) extending from the roof to the ground floor, with a distance of just 70 ft between each one in the impact region. The size of the hijacked 767 easily severed all three, trapping close to a thousand crash survivors. All stairwells from floors 93 up to 99 were destroyed or blocked and elevator service was disrupted from the 50th floor upward.

The airplane descended downward at an angle of about 10 degrees at impact, pushing rubble into stairwells as many as six stories below where it hit; consequently, the 92nd floor was also sealed off from the rest of the tower when falling debris from Flight 11's impact zone walled off each of its stairwells. The highest survivors in the North Tower came from the 91st floor, while anyone above was left to burn alive, asphyxiate, succumb to toxic exposure from ignited chemicals, or be killed in the tower's eventual collapse. Some 100–200 people plummeted from the upper floors, most of whom died by jumping to escape the intense heat, smoke, and flames.

Light-to-moderate damage was reported on every floor from ground level to the 92nd, including collapsed walls, missing ceiling tiles, severed wires, and smashed windows. The sprinkler system was severed by the impact, causing flooding on various floors throughout the tower. Burning jet fuel was channeled through the building via elevator shafts and ductwork, igniting small-scale fires on many floors between the 77th and 91st. Three major flash fires occurred in the 78th and 44th floor skylobbies as well as the main lobby at the base, causing fatal burns nearly a hundred floors below the impact.

The shockwave was felt in both towers. The northern and western façades of the South Tower were battered by debris, and the explosion broke some windows in the South Tower. Prevailing winds from the northwest caused the top of the South Tower to become engulfed by the thick smoke pouring southeast, and a number of employees at that altitude reported that the fumes began filtering into their floors alongside the intense heat.

Countless people in both the city and state of New York as well as the adjacent state of New Jersey saw first-hand what had happened to the North Tower, and the smoke billowing over the horizon very quickly became visible from parts of Connecticut as well. Despite this, only six people were known to be recording at 08:46. French cameraman Jules Naudet, who was filming a documentary about the Fire Department of the City of New York (later adapted into 9/11), rode with Battalion 1 to investigate a suspected gas leak in a storm drain at the intersection of Church and Lispenard streets, where he caught the only known clear footage of the plane flying into the tower.

Pavel Hlava, a Czech immigrant, unknowingly taped the plane from far away while preparing to drive into the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel from Brooklyn; having later emerged into Manhattan from the tunnel, he filmed Flight 175's impact from a much closer distance. Just south of the World Trade Center, the New York City-based television station WNYW had been filming in nearby City Hall Park and had a camera on the ground when Flight 11 crashed into the tower offscreen. Reporter Dick Oliver picked up the camera and recorded the immediate aftermath.

A webcam set up by Wolfgang Staehle at an art exhibit in Brooklyn to take images of Lower Manhattan every four seconds also captured stills of Flight 11 flying towards the North Tower and the explosion that followed. The other two recordings were audio-only: tax consultant and FBI informant Stephen McArdle, who was wearing a wire to meet with a tax assessor under investigation for bribery, recorded the impact of Flight 11 while dining with the suspect at a cafe at the Marriott World Trade Center, and also captured Flight 175 while still at the complex; the other audio recording came from a business meeting at the nearby One Liberty Plaza.

CNN began broadcasting at 8:49, with anchor Carol Lin reporting "...that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center." Shortly after, in an on-air phone call from his office at the CNN New York bureau, CNN vice president of finance Sean Murtagh reported that a large passenger commercial jet had hit the World Trade Center, and other television networks began interrupting regular broadcasting with news of the crash within minutes. Some reporters claimed that the plane that struck the North Tower was a "small, twin-engine jet," despite the size of the hole in the skyscraper. At 08:55, senior advisor to the president Karl Rove conveyed this misleading information to President George W. Bush as he arrived at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida; the president's surmise was that the crash "must have been caused by pilot error."

The general assumption was that Flight 11's crash was a tragic accident, although some news stations suggested it could have been on purpose. Though many people in the South Tower chose to evacuate after seeing what had happened in the North Tower, the Port Authority made the decision not to initiate an immediate full-scale evacuation of the South Tower immediately following the first plane crash, operating under the assumption that it was an accident. Seventeen minutes after the first impact, the World Trade Center's South Tower was hit by United Airlines Flight 175, confirming that the crash was deliberate.