American Airlines Flight 77

American Airlines Flight 77 was an American domestic passenger flight from Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia 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 Boeing 757 was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., killing all 64 aboard the flight and another 125 in the building.

Flight 77 became airborne at 08:20 EDT (UTC−04:00). Thirty-one minutes after takeoff, the attackers stormed the cockpit and forced the passengers and crew to the rear of the cabin, threatening the hostages but initially sparing all of them. Lead hijacker Hani Hanjour assumed control of the aircraft after having undergone extensive flight training as part of his preparation for the attack. Because Indianapolis Air Route Traffic Control was unaware of the hijackings of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, Flight 77 was initially wrongly treated as a presumed plane crash. Police services were dispatched to southwestern West Virginia, above which Flight 77 had vanished from radar. In the meantime, two people aboard discreetly made phone calls to family members and relayed information on the situation without the knowledge of their assailants.

Hanjour flew the airplane into the west side of the Pentagon at 09:37. Many people witnessed the impact, and news sources began reporting on the incident within minutes, and footage of the crash was recorded by a Pentagon parking gate security camera. The 757 severely damaged an area of the Pentagon and caused a large fire that took several days to extinguish. By 10:10, the damage inflicted by the aircraft and ignited jet fuel led to a localized collapse of the Pentagon's western flank, followed forty minutes later by another five stories of the structure. Flight 77 was the third of four passenger jets to be commandeered by terrorists that morning, and the last to reach a target intended by al-Qaeda. The hijacking was to be coordinated with that of United Airlines Flight 93, which was flown in the direction of Washington, D.C., the US capital. The terrorists on Flight 93 had their sights set on a federal government building not far from the Pentagon, but deliberately crashed the airplane in a Pennsylvania field when the passengers fought for control after being alerted to the previous suicide attacks, including Flight 77's.

The damaged sections of the Pentagon were rebuilt in 2002, with occupants moving back into the completed areas that August. The 184 victims of the attack are memorialized in the Pentagon Memorial adjacent to the crash site. The 1.93 acre park contains a bench for each of the victims, arranged according to their year of birth.

Background

The flight was commandeered as part of the September 11 attacks. The attacks themselves cost somewhere in the region of $400,000 and $500,000 to execute, but the source of this financial support remains unknown. Led by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was described as being the "principal architect" of the attacks in the 9/11 Commission Report, al-Qaeda was motivated by several factors, not least of which was anti-Western sentiment. Because al-Qaeda only had the resources to commandeer four passenger jets, there was disagreement between Mohammed and Osama bin Laden over which targets should be prioritized. Mohammed favored striking the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, while bin Laden was bent on toppling the United States federal government, a goal he believed could be accomplished by destroying the Pentagon, the White House, and the United States Capitol. Though bin Laden himself expressed a preference for the destruction of the White House over the Capitol, his subordinates disagreed, citing its difficulty in striking from the air. Hani Hanjour – likely while in the presence of fellow Flight 77 accomplice Nawaf al-Hazmi – scoped out the Washington metropolitan area on July 20, 2001, by renting a plane and taking a practice flight from Fairfield, New Jersey, to Gaithersburg, Maryland, in order to determine the feasibility of each of the possible candidates.

In the end, 19 terrorists participated in the attacks against the United States, consisting of three groups of five men each and one group of four. The nine hijackers on Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 93 were assigned the task of striking governmental structures in or near the national capital of Washington, D.C., and as such, the objective was for the two hijackings to be coordinated insofar as both planes being aimed towards targets in the Washington metropolitan area. Significant complications faced by the four terrorists on Flight 93 ensured that Flight 77 was the only one to successfully attack a target intended by al-Qaeda when it struck the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, at 09:37, while a passenger uprising forced the hijackers aboard Flight 93 to crash the plane in rural Pennsylvania.

Regardless, the degree of coordination between Flight 77 and Flight 93 was evidently less than that of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, the two airliners that were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center 17 minutes apart in a joint attack on New York City. Flights 11 and 175 both departed from Logan International Airport in Boston for Los Angeles International Airport, and crashed into targets that stood next to each other, in contrast to the Pentagon and the federal government building Flight 93 was set to crash into, which were simply located in the same general area.

One noteworthy difference between the attacks in the National Capital Region and those in New York is that the teams on Flights 77 and 93 did not follow suit with their counterparts on Flights 11 and 175 by booking planes from the same airport with the same California destination in mind. Flight 77's group hijacked a plane out of Dulles International Airport in Virginia, conveniently situated near the Pentagon and consequently the capital, on a flight path destined for LAX. Conversely, Flight 93 departed from Newark International Airport in New Jersey, nearly 200 mi northeast of D.C., bound for San Francisco International Airport. There was also no contact between Hanjour and Flight 93 hijacker pilot Ziad Jarrah on the day of the attacks, whereas Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi spoke over the phone while preparing to board their respective flights, apparently to confirm the attacks were ready to begin.

Flight

The aircraft involved in the hijacking was a Boeing 757-223, registered as N644AA The crew included Captain Charles Burlingame (51) (a Naval Academy graduate and former fighter pilot), First Officer David Charlebois (39), purser Renee May and flight attendants Michele Heidenberger, Jennifer Lewis and Kenneth Lewis. The capacity of the aircraft was 188 passengers, but with 58 passengers on September 11, the load factor was 33 percent. American Airlines said Tuesdays were the least-traveled day of the week, with the same load factor seen on Tuesdays in the previous three months for Flight 77. Passenger Barbara Olson, whose husband Theodore Olson served as the 42nd Solicitor General of the United States, was en route to a recording of the TV show Politically Incorrect. A group of three 11-year-old schoolchildren from three different DC schools along with their teachers, and two National Geographic Society staff members were also on board, embarking on an educational trip west to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, California. Former Georgetown University basketball coach John Thompson had originally booked a ticket on Flight 77. As he would tell the story many times in the following years, including a September 12, 2011 interview on Jim Rome's radio show, he had been scheduled to appear on that show on September 12, 2001. Thompson was planning to be in Las Vegas for a friend's birthday on September 13, and initially insisted on traveling to Rome's Los Angeles studio on the 11th. However, this did not work for the show, which wanted him to travel on the day of the show. After a Rome staffer personally assured Thompson he would be able to travel from Los Angeles to Las Vegas immediately after the show, Thompson changed his travel plans. He would later feel the impact from the crash at his home near the Pentagon.

Hijacking

At approximately 08:51–08:54, the terrorists launched their assault. The modus operandi of Hanjour's group was in stark contrast to the other three teams, in that while the victims were threatened with knives and box cutters, there were no reports of any injuries or deaths prior to the crash; both pilots were spared when the cockpit was breached, and the use of chemical weapons or bomb threats was not reported by either of the two people who made phone calls from the rear of the cabin. At 08:54, as the plane flew in the vicinity over Pike County, Ohio, it began deviating from its normal assigned flight path and turned south. Two minutes later, the plane's transponder was switched off. The flight's autopilot was promptly engaged and set on a course heading eastbound towards Washington, D.C.

American Airlines Flight 77 differed from the hijacked jets bound for the World Trade Center in that its disappearance from radar was wrongly interpreted as a plane crash, not a hijacking. This is because only the Boston and New York Air Route Control Centers had ascertained hijacking had taken place, due to Mohamed Atta's accidental transmission to the ground. Flight 77 was over West Virginia and southern Ohio when it was hijacked, and thus fell into Indianapolis Center's remit. Boston Center had communicated the transmission and hijacking hypothesis with just New York and the North American Aerospace Defense Command's (NORAD) Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) in Rome, New York at this point, which was shortly before 9:00 a.m. At 9:08, Indianapolis Center contacted Langley Air Force Base and the West Virginia State Police to look for a presumed crash site and organize a search and rescue mission. The relevant regional FAA Center was informed of a presumed crash in Ohio or West Virginia a minute later, at 9:09.

At 09:24, FAA headquarters became aware there was an emergency on board the airplane, but not a hijacking. After learning of United Airlines Flight 175's hijacking and deciding a second hijacking involving an American Airlines aircraft was probable, American Airlines' executive vice president Gerard Arpey ordered a nationwide ground stop for the airline. For several minutes, Indianapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center and dispatchers for American Airlines made several failed attempts to contact the hijacked airliner, giving up just as Flight 175 flew into the World Trade Center's South Tower at 09:03. The plane had been flying over an area of limited radar coverage at the time of its hijacking. With air controllers unable to contact the flight by radio, an Indianapolis official declared that it had possibly crashed at 09:09, twenty-eight minutes before it actually did. Sometime between 09:17 and 09:22, Hanjour broadcast a deceptive announcement via the cabin's public address system, advising those aboard that the plane was being hijacked, that they were returning to the airport, and that their best chance of survival was by not resisting. This tactic was also used on Flight 11 and on Flight 93 (and presumably Flight 175) with the aim to deliberately deceive the passengers and crew into believing the hijackers plan was to land the plane after securing a ransom; in both cases, however, the terrorists' understanding of the internal communication systems used aboard aircraft was evidently not as good as Hanjour's, as they keyed the wrong microphone and broadcast their message to the ground instead. No passengers aboard Flight 77 reported hearing any intercom messages.

Crash

At 9:29 a.m., one minute after Flight 93 was hijacked, the terrorists aboard Flight 77 disengaged the autopilot and took manual control of the plane. Turning and descending rapidly as it made its final approach toward Washington, the airplane was detected again on radar screens by controllers at Dulles, who mistook it for a military fighter at first glance due to its high speed and maneuvering.

While Flight 77 was 5 mi west-southwest of the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, it made a 330-degree spiral turn clockwise. By the end of the revolution, the 757 was descending 2200 ft, pointed toward the Pentagon and downtown Washington. Advancing the throttles to full power, Hanjour rapidly began diving toward his target. The wings clipped five street lights as the plane flew level above the ground, while the right wing in particular struck a portable generator, creating a smoke trail seconds before smashing into the Pentagon.

Flying at a speed of 530 mph over the Navy Annex Building adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery, Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon's western flank at 09:37:46. The plane struck the establishment at the first-floor level and was rolled slightly to the left, with the right wing elevated as it crashed. The front part of the fuselage immediately disintegrated upon impact, while the mid and tail sections continued moving for another fraction of a second, with tail section debris penetrating farthest into the building. In total, the aircraft took 0.8 seconds to pass 310 ft through the three outermost of the structure's five rings and unleashed a fireball that rose 200 ft above the building. The 64 people aboard the flight were killed instantly, while a further 125 people in the Pentagon were either killed outright or fatally injured.

In the minutes leading up to the crash, Reagan Airport controllers had asked a passing Air National Guard Lockheed C-130 Hercules to identify and follow the aircraft. The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Steven O'Brien, told them he believed it was either a Boeing 757 or 767, observing that its silver fuselage meant it was most likely an American Airlines jet. O'Brien mentioned having difficulty picking out the airplane in the "East Coast haze", but moments later reported seeing a "huge" fireball. His initial assumption as he approached the crash site was that the plane had simply hit the ground, but upon closer inspection he saw the damage done to the Pentagon's west side and relayed to Reagan control, "Looks like that aircraft crashed into the Pentagon, sir."

At the time of the attacks, approximately 18,000 people worked in the Pentagon, 4,000 fewer than before renovations began in 1998. The section of the Pentagon that was struck, which had recently been renovated at a cost of $250 million, housed the Naval Command Center.

The fatalities in the Pentagon included 55 military personnel and 70 civilians. Of those 125 killed, 92 were on the first floor, 31 were on the second floor, and two were on the third. Seven Defense Intelligence Agency civilian employees were killed while the Office of the Secretary of Defense lost one contractor. The US Army suffered 75 fatalities – 53 civilians (47 employees and six contractors) and 22 soldiers – while the US Navy suffered 42 fatalities – nine civilians (six employees and three contractors) and 33 sailors. Lieutenant General Timothy Maude, an Army deputy chief of staff, was the highest-ranking military officer killed at the Pentagon; also killed was retired Rear Admiral Wilson Flagg, a passenger on the plane. Lt Mari-Rae Sopper, JAGC, USNR, was also on board the flight, and was the first Navy Judge Advocate ever to be killed in action. Another 106 were injured on the ground and were treated at area hospitals.

On the side where the plane hit, the Pentagon is bordered by Interstate 395 and Washington Boulevard. Motorist Mary Lyman, who was on I-395, saw the airplane pass over at a "steep angle toward the ground and going fast" and then saw the cloud of smoke from the Pentagon. Omar Campo, another witness, was on the other side of the road:

Afework Hagos, a computer programmer, was on his way to work and stuck in a traffic jam near the Pentagon when the airplane flew over. "There was a huge screaming noise and I got out of the car as the plane came over. Everybody was running away in different directions. It was tilting its wings up and down like it was trying to balance. It hit some lampposts on the way in." Daryl Donley witnessed the crash and took some of the first photographs of the site.

USA Today reporter Mike Walter was driving on Washington Boulevard when he witnessed the crash:

Terrance Kean, who lived in a nearby apartment building, heard the noise of loud jet engines, glanced out his window, and saw a "very, very large passenger jet". While he watched, "it just plowed right into the side of the Pentagon. The nose penetrated into the portico. And then it sort of disappeared, and there was fire and smoke everywhere." Tim Timmerman, who is a pilot himself, noticed American Airlines markings on the aircraft as he saw it hit the Pentagon. Other drivers on Washington Boulevard, Interstate 395, and Columbia Pike witnessed the crash, as did people in Pentagon City, Crystal City, and other nearby locations.

Flight recorders

About 03:40 on September 14, a paramedic and a firefighter who were searching through the debris of the impact site found two dark boxes, about 1.5 by 2 ft long. They called for an FBI agent, who in turn called for someone from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The NTSB employee confirmed that these were the flight recorders ("black boxes") from American Airlines Flight 77. Dick Bridges, deputy manager for Arlington County, Virginia, said the cockpit voice recorder was damaged on the outside and the flight data recorder was charred. Bridges said the recorders were found "right where the plane came into the building".

The cockpit voice recorder was transported to the NTSB lab in Washington, D.C., to see what data was salvageable. In its report, the NTSB identified the unit as an L-3 Communications, Fairchild Aviation Recorders model A-100A cockpit voice recorder – a device which records on magnetic tape. There were several loose pieces of magnetic tape that were found lying inside of the tape enclosure. No usable segments of tape were found inside the recorder; according to the NTSB's report, "[t]he majority of the recording tape was fused into a solid block of charred plastic". On the other hand, all the data from the flight data recorder, which used a solid-state drive, was recovered.