U.S. Military Response During The September 11 Attacks - Flight 11

Flight 11

At 8:14, the pilot of Flight 11 failed to respond to an instruction to ascend issued from Boston Center, the FAA's Air Traffic Control (ATC) center which controls the airspace. The pilot was, at that time, flying opposite Boston arrivals, and as Flight 11 began to pose an air hazard, air traffic controllers began to reroute arriving aircraft for adequate separation. Boston Center flight controller Tom Roberts said "We had pretty much moved all the airplanes from Albany, New York to Syracuse, New York out of the way because that’s the track he was going on.'" At 8:20 EDT, Betty Ong, an American Airlines flight attendant on Flight 11, called the American Airlines reservation desk to report the Flight as hijacked. After 08:21 EDT, American Airlines Flight 11 no longer transmitted transponder altitude or identification information.

After the plane collided with the World Trade Center, American Airlines officials did not confirm loss of Flight 11 for several hours.

At 8:21, the aircraft (now visible only on primary radar) began to veer radically off course. At 8:25, the controller heard what he believed was the voice of a hijacker in a radio transmission from Flight 11. The Boston Center called the FAA Command Center at Herndon at 8:28 to report the hijacking. At 8:32, Herndon called FAA Headquarters in Washington. At 8:34, Boston Center contacted Otis Air National Guard (ANG) base to notify them of the hijacking. The controller at Otis directed Boston to contact NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), and then informed the Otis Operations Center to expect a call from NEADS ordering a scramble. At this time two pilots began to suit up and drove to their waiting F-15 fighter jets. At 8:38, Boston Center contacted NEADS in Rome, New York. This was the first report of a hijacking that reached NORAD.

The two F-15 alert aircraft at Otis Air National Guard Base in Falmouth, Massachusetts were ordered to battle stations (seated in their aircraft, engines not yet started). At 8:46, just at the time the first tower was hit, Nash and Duffy were ordered to scramble (an order that begins with engine start-up, a process that takes about five minutes), and radar confirmed they were airborne by 8:53. By that time, however, the World Trade Center's North Tower had already been hit.

At that time, NEADS personnel were still trying to pinpoint the location of Flight 11, but were unable. Without having a specific target located, military commanders were uncertain where to send the fighters. Boston Center controllers were still tracking Flight 11 as a primary target but were unable to communicate its location to NEADS by phone. Colin Scoggins, the military liaison at the FAA’s Boston Center, later said "I was giving NEADS accurate location information on at least 5 instances where AA11 was yet they could never find them. … I originally gave them an F/R/D, which is a fixed radial distance from a known location; they could not identify the target. They requested latitudes/longitudes, which I gave them; they still could not identify AA11. I gave them 20 south of Albany heading south at a high rate of speed, 600 knots, then another call at 50 south of Albany.”

After the news of an aircraft hitting the World Trade Center, no decision was made to alter the course of the F-15s of the 102nd Fighter Wing. A decision was made to send the Otis fighters south of Long Island rather than to just north of New York City, as originally ordered by Maj. Nasypany of NEADS.

One of the pilots, Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Duffy, would later state he had already heard about the suspected hijacking (attributed to a phone call from the FAA’s Boston Center) as he was supervising training exercises at Otis ANG base. Claiming to have a "bad feeling about the suspected hijacking", he and his wingman, Major Daniel Nash, decided to use their F-15’s afterburners.

Flying supersonicly, the F-15’s were just south of Long Island when United Airlines Flight 175 smashed into the World Trade Center’s south tower. NEADS wanted to direct the fighters over Manhattan, but FAA air controllers, fearing collisions with civilian aircraft, told NEADS to hold off. According to the FAA, there is an average of 200 flights per 24 hours over the Hudson River in the vicinity of NYC. The fighters were then ordered in a holding pattern off the coast of Long Island (in military-controlled airspace), where they remained from 9:09 to 9:13. After the airspace was cleared, the Otis fighters were directed towards Manhattan, where they arrived at 9:25 and established a combat air patrol (CAP).

Colin Scoggins, aware that the 177th Fighter Wing launches F-16s for training flights every morning around this time from their base on Atlantic City International Airport, suggested to NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) that it contact Atlantic City to use these jets in response to the hijacked Flight 11 out of concern that Otis fighters would be unable to intercept in time. Scoggins would later recount: “I requested that we take from Atlantic City very early in the, not launch from the ground but those already airborne in Warning Area 107 if they were there, which I believe they were.” NEADS did not follow that request. Around this time, two F-16s from the 177th Fighter Wing were away from base performing a training mission, and were eight minutes flying time away from New York City in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, closer than Otis by two minutes' flying time. The two fighter jets were unarmed and performing practice bombing runs over a section of the Pine Barrens in New Jersey that is designated for military drills. Pilots from the 177th routinely train for interception of hostile aircraft, and military pilots had anticipated having to use their unarmed planes as air-to-air missiles if unarmed. About an hour after the Sept. 11 attacks began, the 177th received orders to send up fully armed F-16s in response.

The 9/11 Commission report stated “The center tried to contact a former alert site in Atlantic City, unaware it had been phased out.”