• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

• • •

MORE WAS IN FACT already happening. Since 8:56, well before Bush began listening to the second graders, FAA ground controllers had begun worrying about a third airliner. American Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles out of Washington’s Dulles Airport, had failed to respond to routine messages, and deviated from its assigned course. Its transponder was turned off and it could not be seen on radar. The controller of the moment, in Indianapolis, knew nothing of the events in New York. He thought the plane had experienced serious technical failure and was “gone.”

Soon after 9:00, as the second hijacked airplane crashed into the South Tower, controllers began circulating information that Flight 175 was missing, perhaps crashed. Air Force Search and Rescue and the police were alerted, American Airlines notified. Some at American, meanwhile, thought for a while that it was Flight 77—not United’s 175—that had crashed into the Trade Center’s South Tower. “Whose plane is whose?”: the gist of one conversation between an American manager and his counterpart at United summarizes the general confusion.

United dispatcher Ed Ballinger, responsible for sixteen of the airline’s transcontinental flights, had learned that a Flight 175 attendant had called reporting a hijacking. He composed a cautious message to 175 that read, “How’s the ride? Anything Dispatch can do for you?” It was too late. By the time the message went out, at 9:03, the crew and passengers on board the plane were beyond help. In the same minute, Flight 175 struck the South Tower.

Four minutes after that, Boston area Air Traffic Control advised all commercial airplane pilots in its sector to secure their cockpits. Boston also recommended that the FAA’s Command Center issue a nationwide warning, but the Command Center failed to do so. At 9:19 at United, however, dispatcher Ballinger acted on his own initiative and began sending messages to all “his” flights. They read: “Beware any cockpit intrusion. Two a/c [aircraft] hit World Trade Center.”

By 9:05, aware now of the Flight 11 hijacker’s transmission about having “planes,” FAA’s New York Center issued orders forbidding any aircraft to leave, arrive at, or travel through, their airspace until further notice. “We have several situations going on here,” a New York Center manager told the Command Center. “We have other aircraft that may have a similar situation going on here.” With 4,546 airplanes under their control in the United States that morning, the managers were facing into a situation covered by no training manual.

CONTROLLERS REMAINED totally ignorant of the true status of American 77, the third plane in trouble—though not for want of trying on the part of one of its crew. At 9:12, flight attendant Renee May—assigned to First Class on this latest missing aircraft—got through by phone to her mother in Las Vegas. She spoke just long enough to say six hijackers had taken control, and that passengers and crew were being moved to the back of the plane. She asked her mother to call American Airlines and raise the alarm. Then she got out, “I love you, Mom,” before the call was disconnected.

May’s mother got through to American in Washington, waited while she was put on hold, then relayed her daughter’s message. With staff already distracted by news of events in New York, some wondered whether Flight 77 had hit the World Trade Center. The import of May’s call became lost in the general confusion.

In the West Wing of the White House, the videoconference of senior officials was yet to get under way. After the second strike, meanwhile, Vice President Cheney had picked up a phone and said, “I need to talk to the President … The Cabinet is going to need direction.”

AT THE SCHOOL in Florida, the President’s reading session with the children finally came to an end. “Hoo!” he exclaimed. “These are great readers … Very impressive! Thank you all so very much for showing me your reading skills … Thanks for having us.”

Why had Bush continued to sit in the classroom—for