Skip to playerSkip to main contentSkip to footer
babycarseattips
  • 5/30/2025

Category

📺
TV
Transcript
00:01There was a sense of something coming over the tops of our cars.
00:05A commercial jet screams low over Washington, D.C.
00:09And the fireballs just billowed out of the Pentagon.
00:13You have watched the tragedy of an outrageous act of barbaric terrorism.
00:17My passenger manifest, surveillance video of the works.
00:21The attack on the Pentagon mobilizes hundreds of FBI agents and NTSB investigators.
00:27Left.
00:28You had the largest investigation in American history going on.
00:32They uncover a mountain of evidence.
00:34What are you guys doing?
00:36Shocking details about the terrorist hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77.
00:42Stay where you are now or die!
00:44Their strategy was audacious but not complicated and it worked.
00:58It's nearly 8 a.m. at Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C.
01:12American Airlines Flight 77 will soon be heading to Los Angeles.
01:3039-year-old David Charlebois is the first officer.
01:34Any plans for the big day?
01:36We're going to take in the ball game at Angel Stadium.
01:39Oh, yeah?
01:40That'll be great.
01:41The captain, Charles Burlingame, turns 52 tomorrow.
01:45Captain Burlingame was a former Navy pilot.
01:51He was a graduate of the Fighter Weapons School, otherwise, and more commonly known as Top Gun.
01:56A very experienced airline pilot, a lot of years in service, very professional.
02:00Can I help you with that?
02:06The Boeing 757 is less than half full this morning.
02:10There are only 58 passengers on board.
02:18No, I'm booked all day that day.
02:20What about next week?
02:22Barbara Olson is on her way to L.A. to appear on a TV talk show.
02:27Bye.
02:28Barbara Olson was a high-profile lawyer in Washington, D.C., very active in the political circles out there.
02:34She was also the wife of the U.S. Solicitor General at the time, Ted Olson.
02:43Departure frequency will be 125.05.
02:47Runway 3-0 cleared for takeoff.
02:50Cleared for takeoff, 3-0, American 77.
02:54On the roll.
02:58At 8.20 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 gets underway.
03:11V1.
03:13Rokey.
03:14It was just a beautiful day.
03:27The skies were clear throughout most of the country, in fact.
03:30And it was just a really, really gorgeous day for flying.
03:33It takes roughly five hours to make the 2,300-mile trip from Washington to Los Angeles.
03:45At 8.46, Flight 77 reaches cruising altitude, 35,000 feet.
03:50Looks like we're going to have clear skies all the way.
03:54That's what we like to hear.
03:56American 77, turn right, 10 degrees.
04:03Vectors for traffic.
04:04On the ground, air traffic controllers guide the 757.
04:09Sounds right, American 77.
04:11I've always equated it to like a three-dimensional chess game, if you will.
04:17Steve Baird was an air traffic controller for more than 20 years.
04:24We worked a lot of airplanes, 12 to 17 airplanes at a time.
04:27And they're moving along pretty fast.
04:29And so things are happening pretty quickly.
04:31American Airlines 77, clear direct Falmouth.
04:35Clear direct Falmouth, American 77, thanks.
04:39Falmouth, Kentucky is the next waypoint on Flight 77's route west to Los Angeles.
04:45All right, time for a bit more coffee.
04:50There's not a lot of passengers on board for the crew.
04:54They don't have as many people to take care of.
04:56There's not as much food service to worry about.
04:58I'll have some water, please.
04:59So it's typically a more relaxed flight when the plane's not full.
05:1234 minutes into the flight, controllers notice something odd.
05:18What are you guys doing?
05:21Flight 77 is veering off course.
05:24American 77, center.
05:26At the point where the controller noticed the aircraft take a turn that he did not instruct him to do, that's when he would become concerned.
05:35American 77, radio check.
05:37Two minutes later, their concern turns to alarm.
05:38American 77, radio check.
05:40Flight 77 has vanished from their radar.
05:44Center calling American 77, American 77.
05:50Well, it's extremely rare that a plane would ever go missing, right?
05:51They just don't disappear.
05:52Controllers usually track flights using a signal from a transponder on board the aircraft.
06:07The transponder gives them the flight number, the speed, and altitude.
06:11The controller switches his screen to search for a more basic signal, primary radar.
06:18Supervisor.
06:20But there's still no sign of the plane.
06:22American 77, radio check. How do you read?
06:25Their concern grows with each second of silence.
06:33If I can't see him on the secondary or the primary radar and I can't speak with him, I would assume that he has gone down somewhere and crashed.
06:43Center.
06:44Center.
06:45Then, just after 9am, a call comes in from American Airlines that's almost impossible for controllers to digest.
06:53Center.
07:16It is Tuesday, September the 11th, 2001.
07:20Thousands of people are feared dead.
07:23Lower Manhattan is in chaos.
07:26Almost everybody that saw what happened, saw it on TV, saw it live, said this is not an accident.
07:35There's no way two planes, two commercial aircraft, accidentally hit both towers of the World Trade Center.
07:42No one knew what was going on except for the country was under attack.
07:46And so I think it was very difficult. Where are these airplanes? Are there any other airplanes out there that have gone missing?
07:53The fate of the missing 757 is now much more worrying.
07:58What if it hasn't crashed somewhere in the Midwest?
08:01We need to find that plane.
08:05With two aircraft already in the World Trade Center towers, another aircraft missing, air traffic controllers were most likely just going nuts trying to figure out what's happening.
08:14Supervisor.
08:18I've got a target tracking eastbound at a high range of speed.
08:21At 9.32, more than half an hour after losing contact with the plane, controllers spot a mysterious radar return.
08:32Primary radar, that doesn't give you altitude or any real information.
08:39If it is flight 77, it means the plane has turned around back towards Washington.
08:45We've got to warn D.C.
08:50America's capital could be the next target.
08:55At this point, since he was aware of the attacks on the country, I'm sure he already thought that was one of the hijacked aircraft.
09:04Go for 06. Do you have a commercial aircraft in sight?
09:09Controllers recruit another pilot to try to learn more.
09:13They radio the only other plane in the immediate airspace.
09:17A C-130 cargo plane from nearby Andrews Air Force Base.
09:21Looks like an American Airlines 757.
09:26It's got to be our plane.
09:28Center calling American 77, American 77.
09:32But the 757 is ignoring all radio calls.
09:36And it's heading straight for Washington.
09:40It's 9.35 a.m., and traffic into Washington is getting congested.
09:52I was on my way from my parish to the Arlington National Cemetery for a gray side service.
10:00Father Stephen McGraw is stuck on a freeway right beside the Pentagon.
10:05I took that exit, actually, because I knew that the Pentagon was near Arlington National Cemetery.
10:12And I couldn't remember how to get to Arlington National, so I thought, I can't be that far off.
10:15I'll take this exit.
10:17But in front of the building, there ended up being standstill traffic.
10:23And then, without warning, there was a rush, feeling the vibrations or the sound.
10:29I just know there was an overwhelming sense of something coming over the tops of our cars.
10:36The plane clipped the light pole as it went over the highway, and I turned instinctively to my right.
10:43And to see, just in time, the plane coming in and just crashing into the building right in front of my eyes.
10:51There were these two huge billows of fire that came out of the two top windows of the Pentagon, and the fireballs just kind of billowed out.
11:13The symbol of US military might is now in flames. Smoke pours from a gaping 90-foot-wide hole in the Pentagon's west wall. One entire section of the building has collapsed.
11:32I had not heard anything about the World Trade Center crashes. Didn't have my radio on, hadn't heard anything. And so, I just assumed that this was an accident.
11:43There's no chance that any of the 64 people aboard the plane have survived the impact. And there are sure to be many more dead among Pentagon staff.
11:59On average, any given day, 23,000 some odd people work in the building. It's five rings, five floors, and five levels of military space.
12:11With news of a third airliner attack, the FAA issues an unprecedented order.
12:18Attention all pilots. We have a national emergency. We need to get everyone on the ground.
12:23Every commercial flight in the country must land.
12:26About 10 degrees right. Begin descent.
12:29It's the first time in US history they grounded the whole fleet.
12:33Be advised, we are clearing the airspace.
12:36Controllers are trying to figure out a situation they've never prepared for.
12:40And trying to figure out how to get all the airplanes on the ground and accounted for before more loss of life.
12:46Attention all pilots.
12:47Attorney Richard Newmey was on one of those diverted flights.
12:51Captain comes over the intercom system and said,
12:55We've just been notified that all air traffic in the United States has been required to land.
13:00It was a little bit startling. It was a little bit looking out the window, going, what's going on?
13:05Newmey's flight lands in Wichita, Kansas.
13:08He'll soon learn how lucky he is to be alive.
13:12I was scheduled to speak at a conference.
13:14They booked me a ticket on American Airlines Flight 77 out of Dulles to the West Coast.
13:21At the last moment, he switched his ticket to a more convenient flight.
13:26I had left the original flight itinerary on the refrigerator, drove to the airport, changed the ticket, got on the airplane, was very, very concerned that my wife was thinking that I was still on that plane.
13:41It was one of those things where, you know, God was smiling on me that day.
13:47At the Pentagon, Father McGraw rushes towards the devastation.
13:51He wants to help whoever he can.
13:54After coming to one man in particular, he said, what is your name?
13:58I'm Father McGraw. I'll stay with you.
14:02And he said, I'm Catholic.
14:04And so I actually gave him, in those moments, the sacraments and anointed him on his forehead with the blessed oil, the oil of the sick.
14:17And when I did that, I never sang to him, I tell you, Jesus is with you now.
14:24Can't go back in there.
14:26Got to maintain 500 yards.
14:28Thousands of military staff evacuate the burning Pentagon.
14:32The United States is under siege.
14:37Just across the Potomac River, the hunt for those responsible is already underway.
14:42Want passenger manifests, witnesses, surveillance, video of the works.
14:47We were setting up and actually getting our crew ready to respond to New York at the time.
14:51And then, obviously, we were hit then at the Pentagon.
14:55So we changed our plans.
14:57FBI supervisor John Perrin sets up the agency's Washington command post.
15:03You realize that we're under attack, is what we are.
15:06Then you realize that this is something that's never happened before. This is war.
15:11But before anyone can grasp the full magnitude of what has happened, another threat appears.
15:20The FAA has reports of a fourth hijacking.
15:26We were told that there was another aircraft heading towards Washington, D.C.
15:30And the last timeline we were given was it was about eight minutes out.
15:35So what we did was we sent snipers up on the roof with binoculars to look out for this aircraft.
15:43Across the U.S., thousands of flights are now grounded.
15:47There's just airliner after airliner after airliner parked on the tarmac.
15:54Then, at 10.15 a.m., a blackened crater in rural Pennsylvania reveals what's left of the fourth hijacked plane.
16:02What was unique about that flight is passengers tried to retake the flight.
16:07They were unsuccessful to the extent that the plane still crashed, but they were successful that it did not crash into whatever its intended target was going to be.
16:15Four passenger jets have been hijacked and turned into flying bombs.
16:25Nearly 3,000 people have been killed.
16:27We have watched the tragedy of an outrageous act of barbaric terrorism carried out by fanatics against both civilians and military people.
16:39You never in your wildest dreams would think that they would take aircrafts full of people and turn it into literally a missile.
16:46Americans aren't used to being sucker punched.
16:49We're pretty much convinced that there's a Pacific Ocean and there's an Atlantic Ocean and this stuff doesn't happen here.
16:56And I think on that day, the reality that this is a new world happened.
17:06The Pentagon is now a federal crime scene.
17:10The FBI is in charge of the investigation.
17:12I'd seen my share of deceased, but to see that much in that certain amount of time in that area, I don't care how adjusted you are to it, you feel it.
17:23The FBI faces intense pressure to figure out who committed this terrible crime and how.
17:30Because the crime scene is also an aviation crash site, experts from the National Transportation Safety Board joined the investigation.
17:38The FBI's experts on crimes and criminal investigations, and that covers many areas.
17:45They aren't necessarily airplane experts, and that's where the NTSB can come in.
17:50Tom Howter was one of the first NTSB investigators at the scene.
17:55This airplane was hitting a very heavy structure, so most of the aircraft was reduced down to small pieces.
18:02Investigators need to find the black boxes and any other evidence that could identify the hijackers.
18:10It won't be easy.
18:12The massive impact has left a confusing mixture of debris.
18:16We provided five, six people at different times who assisted on going through the wreckage, going through the building, trying to find, identify aircraft parts for them.
18:27Anything that we took out of the site, we had them look at it and they would identify it to us as either being an aircraft or a file cabinet.
18:37It was very apparent that we needed that type of expertise on the scene.
18:42Hundreds of searchers and investigators work around the clock.
18:46Deep inside the badly damaged structure, the risk of building collapse is a constant danger.
18:56The engineers, they had a technique to see if the building was starting to shift, and if they noticed shifting or heard creaking, everybody would rush out of them.
19:05Everybody out!
19:08That happened at least a half a dozen times.
19:18The number of people killed inside this legendary building reaches 125.
19:25It would have been even higher, but some offices on the west side of the Pentagon were empty.
19:31The area where American Airlines 77 hit had been undergoing some reconstruction, some remodeling.
19:39So there were not as many people at work as there normally would be.
19:43Probably saved hundreds of lives.
19:45As the nation tries to cope with the enormity of the devastation,
19:50FBI agents are already gaining valuable information about how the flights were turned into weapons of terror.
19:56Some passengers managed to make phone calls from the air, describing their ordeal.
20:07Everyone to the back of the planet!
20:09Now!
20:15One of those calls was from Barbara Olsen.
20:17Barbara Olsen called her husband, Ted Olsen, the US Solicitor General at the time, tells him that the plane has been hijacked.
20:28That the hijackers have box cutters and knives, and they've moved people to the back of the plane.
20:34She reveals that the hijackers then forced the pilots to leave the cockpit.
20:40We need to do something.
20:43Barbara Olsen was incredibly brave.
20:45If she's caught, she calls attention to herself, which may draw immediate violence to her.
20:52We'll make it out of here. It's fine.
20:55I love you.
20:57Not much more information is shared at that point before the phone is cut off.
21:00Pilots probably thought that by cooperating, everyone would get home safe.
21:10Prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks, all flight crews were told to cooperate with the hijackers, do what they want, and buy for time.
21:20Please stay calm. Everybody move to the back.
21:23Up to the back.
21:25Traditionally, it had been the aircraft was hijacked, the plane landed, the FBI would come on scene, there would be hours of negotiation, and eventually the hijacking somehow ends.
21:39It really just wasn't in the imagination that they were going to crash these into buildings.
21:42It's now clear how the hijackers took control of Flight 77.
21:48But who were they? And how were they able to carry out their lethal attack?
21:55At Dulles Airport, the search for evidence takes a major step forward.
22:00Airport security flags a suspicious car abandoned in one of the parking lots.
22:06What investigators find in the car is astounding.
22:10That was a treasure trove of investigative leads.
22:14The items include a box cutter,
22:17diagrams of cockpit instruments, and documents bearing Middle Eastern names.
22:28They scanned Flight 77's passenger manifest, checking to see if any of the suspicious names are listed.
22:35It didn't take too long to figure out who the hijackers were.
22:41The trail leads to five attackers.
22:44Three were in first class.
22:46Two more were seated in economy.
22:48The Pentagon attackers are quickly linked to 14 suspects on the three other hijacked planes.
22:58They found some commonalities right away.
23:00One, that 15 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
23:03And the other notable is that most of them had been in the United States for quite some time.
23:07Identifying the hijackers is key, but important questions remain.
23:14How did terrorists get weapons past security at a modern airport?
23:18And how were they able to fly a sophisticated commercial airliner straight into the Pentagon?
23:24The FBI needs to uncover all it can about the Pentagon attackers, including their movements in the days and weeks before 9-11.
23:36They scour government records, credit card transactions, travel itineraries, and more.
23:48All those pieces of paper and all those documentation, they were generating leads because you probably had the largest investigation in American history going on.
23:58At the Pentagon, the exhaustive search effort is paying off.
24:05Agents recover the plane's two black boxes, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.
24:12When the boxes were found, the FBI investigators brought them to the NTSB laboratory.
24:18The recorders could help fill in key gaps in the timeline if their data can be successfully downloaded.
24:24Center calling American 7-7, American 7-7.
24:27The most critical question, what was happening in the cockpit when controllers lost contact with the doomed plague?
24:35While they wait for word on the recorders, investigators scrutinize Pentagon security video.
24:42They soon discover that the deadly impact was caught on tape.
24:46A direct, high-speed hit on the southwest wall of the Pentagon.
24:57It's now clear why the plane virtually disappeared.
25:03When you have an airplane hitting pretty much solid brick, it just vaporizes. There's not a lot left.
25:09But the question remains, how did the hijackers evade security and board the plane?
25:22Potentially dangerous passengers are supposed to be identified before they even get to the airport.
25:28The airlines rely on a computerized screening system known as CAPS.
25:32One of the things that CAPS does is the computer-assisted passenger pre-screening system.
25:40It flags you if you have certain suspicious indicators.
25:45Investigators wonder, did that pre-screening system somehow fail?
25:50When they study the records for Flight 77, they make a startling discovery.
25:55CAPS did not fail. It actually flagged three of the five hijackers.
26:03A special code was printed on their boarding passes, selecting them for extra security screening.
26:10Yet they still got through. How could this happen?
26:14There's no question that security was inadequate.
26:18Brian Jenkins is an aviation security expert.
26:21The CAPS select a process really didn't mean that much anymore.
26:28And that was critical on the morning of 9-11.
26:32Investigators learned that the extra security screening is minimal.
26:38Passengers flagged by CAPS are not searched.
26:42The airline merely keeps their checked bags off the plane until after they've boarded.
26:46Once they were certain you'd boarded the flight, your bags were loaded onto the plane.
26:52Presumption was that the major threat was from a bomb in the hold of the aircraft.
26:59And a presumption that the terrorists would not be suicidal.
27:06After years without a major incident, it seems the airlines may have become complacent.
27:12The focus on customer service, passenger efficiency, moving people through the airport was the top priority, not security.
27:22But Washington Dulles, like all major airports, has more than one layer of security.
27:27How did armed hijackers get past metal detectors?
27:33Did they have some elaborate scheme to conceal their weapons?
27:38Investigators hope airport security video from the morning of September the 11th can shed light on the mystery.
27:46There was a level of security in play, certainly, looking for bombs on the person, bombs on the luggage, you know, guns, you know, the typical type of thing.
27:56The first two hijackers reached the security checkpoint at around 7.20 a.m.
28:01One calmly proceeds through the metal detector without raising an alarm.
28:08But the second suspect does set it off.
28:12He's carrying something made of metal.
28:15Metal detector cut the weapon.
28:17Then the security process breaks down.
28:20An officer scans the suspect with a handheld detector.
28:24The wand turns up nothing.
28:28They've done this thousands of times.
28:32OK, the alarm went off.
28:35OK, now I'm supposed to wand the guy.
28:38OK, good enough.
28:40Instead of searching the suspect further, security lets him through.
28:45They've got a line of passengers back there.
28:47Move on.
28:49At the time, the bar was set very low for individuals coming through the checkpoint and resolution of all the time.
28:54They've got alarms.
28:59None of the hijackers get a rigorous inspection.
29:05Even though one of them is clearly carrying what looks like a tool or a knife.
29:14There was something clipped to his back pocket, which in the video shows that the screener never really resolved what that was.
29:22And that's a failure.
29:25But the FAA policy at the time was knives of no greater than four inches in blade length.
29:31So even if they had found box cutters and knives on them, those items were allowed on board at the time under FAA policy.
29:40Investigators come to a shattering conclusion.
29:42The 9-11 attackers didn't have an elaborate plan to foil airport security because they didn't need one.
29:52The scary part of their hijack is that it is so simple.
29:55It's like having a security alarm system for your entire house and forgetting to secure the dog door. And oh, that's how they came in.
30:06Their strategy was audacious, but not complicated. And it worked. The five of them got through security and got on board an airplane.
30:15But getting on board with weapons was only the first step.
30:20Everyone to the back of the plane. Now!
30:22The big mystery to solve now is how the hijackers were able to carry out the rest of their murderous mission.
30:29FBI agents dig through financial documents connected to the Pentagon attackers.
30:42They uncover a crucial lead. A check made out to a flight school in Arizona.
30:47Records show that Saudi national Hani Hanjur spent several years trying to become a commercial airline pilot.
30:57He'd applied to schools in Saudi Arabia to fly and was rejected.
31:02Eventually ended up doing flight training in Arizona and was kind of unusual in his flight training because he flunked a lot of checks along the way.
31:11Two months before the attacks, Hanjur rented several private planes, including one he flew to a small airport near Washington, D.C.
31:21For the pilot perspective, it's one thing to fly a flight simulator.
31:25It's a completely different thing to be up in the air to see what the real world looks like from the air.
31:30Airport flight records reveal more chilling details about Hanjur's preparations for 9-11.
31:36Just weeks before the attacks, he and one of his co-conspirators booked a commercial flight out of Washington's Dulles Airport.
31:47They bought seats in first class aboard a Boeing 757.
31:51I think they used the surveillance flights to try to understand how they could take over the aircraft and get into the cockpit.
31:59To learn things like, wow, about 30 minutes after takeoff, once we were a cruise, they opened the door to give the pilots coffee.
32:05So all of that is valuable intelligence and insight for the hijackers.
32:12Ted Wright, American 77.
32:14But flying a sophisticated airliner is very different from piloting a small private plane.
32:20How did the hijackers steer a 757 towards a target 35,000 feet below?
32:27Investigators hope the plane's flight data will provide some answers.
32:32Unfortunately, the cockpit voice recorder was too damaged and no information could be recovered from it.
32:39But we were able to read out the flight data recorder.
32:42They study the flight data to reproduce the exact movements of the plane throughout the flight.
32:49Power's increasing. Vertical speed is good.
32:52Takeoff and climb look completely normal.
32:57Obviously, you look at the data.
32:59You speculate, when did the hijackers take over the airplane?
33:03When did the terrorists, you know, start doing what they did?
33:07That we don't know with any precision.
33:09Clearly, it's some time before the airplane turned back.
33:12Tanking left, nice and smooth.
33:15Must be the autopilot.
33:16The data reveals how the hijackers managed to turn the 757 around.
33:22This heading should take us back to DC.
33:25They relied on the plane's automation.
33:28You don't need to be a pilot at all when the autopilot's on.
33:31He can put a heading into the autopilot. He can put airspeeds into the autopilot.
33:35Everything can be done for him very smoothly.
33:37And he doesn't have to do a lot of control inputs.
33:43Why are we turning?
33:45Keep quiet!
33:47But as the plane nears the Pentagon, the autopilot disengages and the flying begins to change.
33:55Left, right. This guy is really struggling.
34:00Whoa!
34:02The altitude is jumpy. It moves up and down. It's a little bit erratic.
34:05It's quite clear, looking at the data, this is somebody who has never handled a big airplane before.
34:11We should stay on the autopilot a little bit closer.
34:14The hijacker quickly re-engages the autopilot to help take the 757 to a lower altitude.
34:22Descending now.
34:26He's probably never flown an airplane this high.
34:29Having to come down from, you know, 30,000 feet down to ground level,
34:32that's a whole different maneuver than he's used to in a small airplane.
34:37But the autopilot isn't pre-programmed to fly to the precise location of the Pentagon.
34:43It's just ahead. Autopilot off.
34:46Eight minutes from impact, the hijacker must once again fly the aircraft by hand.
34:51Only four miles from the Pentagon, they're still flying higher than 6,000 feet.
35:06You're way too high. We'll never get ahead.
35:07To shed altitude, they make a sharp diving turn to the right.
35:20He misjudged his speed in altitude and had to do a 360 degree turn.
35:29The aircraft can only come out of the sky so fast without breaking up.
35:35So he makes a circle to get the aircraft lower and get it into position to hit the Pentagon.
35:39He had a lot of luck going for him. He had a very clear day.
35:52So getting back, he probably could see the Pentagon from quite a distance out.
35:56In the final seconds, they accelerate to top speed, almost to the point of break-up.
36:11The airplane's overspeed warnings are probably going off. He's in care.
36:14The terrorists probably could not have successfully landed that airplane.
36:33Crashing is a lot easier than landing it, and they proved that.
36:37Investigators now understand the deadly flight path of American 77.
36:51The flight data solves one more mystery as well.
36:56Why controllers lost radar contact with the 757 when the crisis began?
37:02Center calling American 77. American 77.
37:05Looks like somebody deliberately switched off the transponder. Here.
37:13The hijackers turned off the signal used to track the plane.
37:18The transponder controls are on the central console between the two pilots,
37:23so you can turn it off right there. It's very easy to do.
37:26American 77, radio check. How do you read?
37:30With the transponder off...
37:32Supervisor.
37:33Controllers could no longer see the flight on their secondary radar.
37:36American 77.
37:38So turning off the transponder, if you're a criminal, makes sense,
37:41because you don't want people to track you.
37:44At the moment controllers switched to primary radar to search for the missing plane,
37:50Flight 77 just happened to be passing through an area of poor primary coverage.
37:54For American Airlines 77 to drop off radar in an area of limited radar coverage,
38:02one that's incredibly lucky for the hijackers, but also not totally unexpected,
38:07because not every square mile in the United States is covered by radar.
38:10Luck may have helped the hijackers hit their target, but the FBI now has no doubt the attack was planned down to the last detail.
38:22They chose their seats carefully.
38:25They wanted to be closer to the cockpit, so they could observe when would be the appropriate moment to make their rush at the cockpit.
38:37The crew has no reason to suspect a thing.
38:44The attack is underway before passengers have any hint of danger.
38:51The fate of Flight 77 is now sealed.
39:05Ani Honjur, he's the pilot.
39:07In all likelihood, he's not going to get involved at all in the initial stages of the hijacking.
39:12Please don't let me.
39:13Because if he's hurt or killed, then the mission's unsuccessful at that point.
39:17Open the door. Cut yourself.
39:23The flight attendants carry keys to the cockpit door.
39:28So an option is to overtake a flight attendant, take their key, and then just unlock the door.
39:37Open the cockpit!
39:40No!
39:42The pilots have no warning and no time to alert authorities.
39:45There is a hijacking control code that the pilot scan put into the transponder, but apparently that didn't happen.
39:54Stay calm. Stay calm. Don't hurt anybody.
39:58That's the flight attendant they've been flying with probably for years.
40:02One of your best friends is on the other side of that door with a knife to their throat.
40:05That's a different scenario than somebody you don't even know.
40:13Everyone to the back of the plane!
40:15Now!
40:16The hijackers begin their descent.
40:22American 77, radio check. How do you read?
40:29I love you. I'll see you soon.
40:31It is unlikely that crew or passengers would have thought that the plane is going to be turned into a missile.
40:41Whoa!
40:42The erratic flying almost certainly gets the attention of the captain, but there's nothing he can do.
40:47You have to let me back in the cockpit.
40:48Stay where you are now or die!
40:49I've got a target tracking eastbound at a high rate of speed.
40:58By the time controllers spot Flight 77's primary radar return, the plane is only five minutes from DC.
41:06There was nothing the controllers could have done.
41:08The 100-ton jet screams lower and lower.
41:17Steel light poles snap like twigs.
41:20Corrine! Corrine! Pull! Up!
41:23Up! Up!
41:29Power's back!
41:309-11 shook us to our core.
41:38Anybody that was of age during that time, it's like the Kennedy assassination.
41:44Where were you on 9-11? And everybody has their story.
41:47It has marked our generation.
41:50It was a win for the bad guys. We can't let that happen again.
41:53The 9-11 attacks bring immediate and profound change to commercial aviation, both in the US and around the world.
42:03The situation for airport security, airplane security was a lot different prior to 9-11 than it is today.
42:10Just two months after the attacks, the US government creates the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA.
42:18The federal government took direct responsibility for aviation security, and the screeners are now federal employees.
42:31The training certainly has improved.
42:34The TSA brings in strict new rules on what travelers can carry on planes.
42:41Airports start screening passengers with full-body scanning machines.
42:48There are also major changes to onboard security.
42:52The cockpit doors. I mean, it's not just the door, the whole bulkhead on the aircraft has been made darn near impregnable.
42:59It's bulletproof, you can't get through the locks.
43:02But perhaps the most important change to security has come not from new rules or better technology,
43:09but from the permanently altered attitudes of airline passengers everywhere.
43:14Today, the assumption by passengers, if they feel threatened with hijacking, is not one of compliance.
43:25You saw somebody in the back of the plane get up and say, you know, start screaming things running to the front of the plane?
43:29You have a choice of sitting in your seat and minding your own business?
43:32Or you have the option of standing up saying, uh-uh.
43:34I guarantee you, you're going to stand up. The paradigm has changed.
43:42Until we invent the silver bullet, or the x-ray for a man's soul, there are going to be performance problems.
43:50But it is much better than it was.
43:53the slow onwards.
43:54And then they 2003.
43:55it was gathering.
43:56and then it was.
43:58and
43:59and then it was.