American Airlines Flight 77
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American Airlines Flight 77 was a morning flight that routinely flew from Washington Dulles International Airport in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles International Airport (IAD-LAX). On September 11, 2001, the Boeing 757-223, N644AA, was hijacked as part of the 9/11 attacks. The hijackers were reported to have been Khalid al-Mihdhar, Majed Moqed, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salem al-Hazmi, and the suicide pilot Hani Hanjour.
The flight was scheduled to depart at 8:10 AM EDT, but actually departed at 8:20. It was later determined that three of the hijackers had been stopped before boarding the flight because they failed the metal detector test, but were nonetheless allowed to enter the plane.
Image:911 commission AA77 path.png The flight was probably hijacked between 8:51 to 8:54. The assailants used knives and box-cutters to gain entrance to the cockpit. By 8:56, the flight was turned around, and the transponder had been disabled. The FAA was aware at this point that there was an emergency aboard the plane. (By this time, American Airlines Flight 11 had already crashed into the World Trade Center, and United Airlines flight 175 was known to have been hijacked as well.)
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, two passengers made phone calls to contacts on the ground. At 9:12, passenger Renee May was reported to have called her mother, Nancy May, in Las Vegas. She said her flight was being hijacked by six individuals and they had been moved to the rear of the plane. Barbara K. Olson, another passenger, called her husband, United States Solicitor General Theodore Olson at the Justice Department twice to tell him about the hijacking and to report that the passengers and pilots were held in the back of the plane. After the call was cut off, Theodore Olson tried unsuccessfully to contact Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Flight 77 crashed into the western side of The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, just south of Washington, DC at 9:37 AM EDT, killing all of its 58 passengers (including the hijackers) and 6 crew (but see Disputes below). The section of the Pentagon hit consisted mainly of recently renovated, unoccupied offices, and was damaged by the crash and the ensuing violent fire. The crash and subsequent fire penetrated three outer ring sections of the western side. The outermost ring section was largely destroyed, and a large section collapsed. 125 people in the Pentagon died from the attack.
After the crash, the flight route designation for future flights on the same route was renumbered Flight 149.
Among American Airlines Flight 77 were 3 young schoolchildren, embarking on an educational trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, California, as part of a program funded by the National Geographic Society. The student names were Bernard Brown, 11, Asia Cotton, 11, and Rodney Dickens also 11 years old. Their chaperones; Sarah Clark, 65; James Debeuneure, 58; Ann Judge, 45; Hilda Taylor and Joe Ferguson also died.
In total 5 passengers were under 12 years old.
Disputes about the final destination of Flight 77
- Main article: 9/11_conspiracy_theories#The_Pentagon
Some dispute the claim that Flight 77 struck the Pentagon. Claims that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757 have been raised based on photographs taken from the highway (hundreds of feet from the building) in which there is a seeming lack of debris and a lack of damage to the building or the lawn. Those who believe that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757 allege that no pieces of a commercial aircraft were found, that the footage was confiscated, and other factors. However, many of these claims have been refuted[1],[2],[3]. Additionally, all of these theories must by definition ignore most of the over 100 eyewitness testimonies documented online which describe a commercial jet impacting the building. None of these theories account for the fate of the aircraft after the above mentioned in-flight calls made by the passengers to their loved ones describing the hijacking. Though some express doubts concerning the ability of making a successful cellphone call above 30,000 ft, others point out that cell phones are regularly used on private and corporate planes thousands of times every day without incident.
External links
- Flight manifest for American Airlines flight 77
- Memorial wiki tribute to those killed in this flight (with flight manifest)
- CooperativeResearch.org - 'Project: Complete 911 Timeline' (Open-Content project)
- GPOAccess.gov - 'The 9-11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Official Government Edition' 2005)
- Oilempire.us - A list of detailed analyses that argue for complicity but against the "no plane" claims.fr:Vol 77 d'American Airlines
