September 13, 2001

The Hijackings: A Pilot's View

Don Radlauer
ICT Consultant

In order to try to unravel the events leading up to Tuesday's catastrophic terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC, we give here a summary of the flight paths of the four doomed flights. The analysis is by a pilot who has accumulated many hours of flight over the Eastern United States.

Flight Summaries

United Airlines Flight 175
UAL Flight 175 took off from Boston’s Logan Airport at 7:58. Its planned route was south-west to northwestern New Jersey, then a gentle right turn to follow a more westerly course towards Los Angeles International Airport. The plane followed this route until the point where it was to bear right; instead, it turned left about 45 degrees to travel southwards towards central New Jersey, then made a sharp left over Middlesex County to approach New York Harbor from the south. This plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center at about 9:05 AM.

Note that Flight 175's legitimate pilots must have been in control until about the time the plane crossed the northern New Jersey border; up to this time the plane had followed its planned route, including turns that the hijackers would not have had the navigational skills to make (and which were not essential in order to fulfill their mission). Also, note that the hijack did not occur until a point at which a passenger on the left side of the plane would have had a clear view of the Twin Towers. From this point on, it was easy to navigate the airplane by this obvious landmark – and target.

The hijackers of this flight clearly knew that its route would take it within about 50 miles of Manhattan – close enough to use the Twin Towers as a visual landmark. Thus, they could sit back and wait until they had a clear view of their target. One obvious conclusion is that the hijackers had taken the flight before and knew the visual characteristics of the flight path.

American Airlines Flight 11
American Flight 11 took off from Logan just after UAL 175, at 7:59. Its planned route was almost straight west through Massachusetts and New York, proceeding on to Los Angeles International. About 60-70 miles west of Boston, the plane began to deviate to the north of its planned route. About 50 miles into New York State, the plane turned sharply left and followed the Hudson River valley down to New York City, impacting the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:45 AM.

The planned route of this flight would bypass Lower Manhattan at a distance of at least 100 miles; in even slightly hazy conditions the hijackers knew that they couldn't count on a view of their target. Instead, they planned in advance to use the Hudson River as their landmark and fly right down its valley to their target. As this valley is easy to find and follow, the hijackers didn't need to keep the legitimate pilots around beyond the climbout period – and thus they took control of the plane at an earlier stage than the hijackers of UAL 175 did.

Again, the hijackers would have needed to have taken this flight before, since familiarity with the route normally taken would be essential in order to know when to take control of the plane and how to find their target. The Hudson River Valley is an obvious landmark, requiring no particular navigational skills to find and follow towards New York City. This is probably one reason why the hijackers apparently took control of Flight 11 much earlier than was the case with UAL 175 – there was no significant risk of getting lost without a “real” pilot. I would hazard a guess that the take-over occurred fairly soon after takeoff, shortly before the point were the plane began to drift northward from its planned route. The minor deviation would not have been of any concern to the hijackers; they knew that they had only to continue in a generally westerly direction and they would pass over the Hudson River valley.
 

United Airlines Flight 93
UAL 93 left Newark International Airport at 8:01, enroute to San Francisco. Its planned route was basically west across northern New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and northern Ohio, and on to the West Coast. Just before reaching Cleveland, Ohio, the plane made a 180-degree turn to the left and proceeded east-southeast to fly just south of Pittsburgh and past it towards Pennsylvania's southern border with Maryland. The plane had evidently already been flying erratically and at a low altitude for some time before it crashed, nose first, in Stony Creek Township eighty miles from Pittsburgh, at 10:10 AM.

The route this flight took after it turned away from Cleveland strongly suggests that its hijackers were intending to attack a target in or near Washington, D.C. There is convincing evidence that there was a struggle between the hijackers and a small group of passengers (and possibly crew). This may account for some of the erratic flying that was reported, as well as the plane's eventual crash in an area well clear of anything that might have been the hijackers' intended target. Had this plane been flown successfully to Washington, D.C., it would have arrived there at around 10:30.

Assuming this hijacking was planned as meticulously as the ones directed at New York targets, the hijackers were presumably using Cleveland and/or the shore of Lake Erie as their indicator that it was time to make their move.

American Airlines Flight 77
American Flight 77 left Dulles International Airport at 8:10. Its planned route would take it over northern Virginia and West Virginia, towards Los Angeles International. Just after turning south and crossing the Ohio-Kentucky border, the plane's transponder (which makes it more visible and identifiable on radar, as well as reporting its altitude to controllers) was turned off; so its exact flight path is not known. At 9:40 AM, the plane crashed into the ground next to the west side of the Pentagon.

A pilot on the ground was quoted as saying that the plane was in a power-dive when it hit the ground. In other words, the hijacker-pilot had spotted his target and was accelerating toward it. In the case of a plane of this size, it is a great deal easier to navigate a plane straight and level into a tall building, as happened at the World Trade Center, than it is to crash precisely into a target close to the ground. The hijacker guiding AL 77 was more than likely intending to bring the plane down onto the Pentagon itself, which would have resulted in far greater devastation. There has been some speculation in the media that the Pentagon was not the intended target of this plane. From the air, the Pentagon is a very visible landmark, which the hijackers could be certain of finding and targeting quite easily. Given the ease of targeting the Pentagon and its role as the center of the United States military, I don’t think there is any reason to assume that it was not the target. If the plane was indeed accelerating as it hit, this would tend to support the contention that the Pentagon was the intended target.
 

General Conclusions

All the hijacked flights took off within a twelve-minute span, and all were fully fueled for a transcontinental flight. Clearly the terrorists carefully selected a set of flights that met these two requirements. It is also clear that, at least in the case of the two flights targeted at New York, the hijackers must have taken the same flights at least once before, in order to familiarize themselves with the routes that would be taken and the landmarks they would use to decide when to attack, and to navigate towards their target.

In the case of UAL 175, at least one of the hijackers was probably sitting on the left side of the plane to act as a "spotter"; when s/he got a clear view of the Twin Towers, it was time to take over the airplane.

Thus a study of previous flight manifests would be advisable; it is likely that at least some of the hijackers’ names – assuming that they had registered under their own names – appear as passengers on the same flights on previous dates. It is also likely that some of the hijackers will be found to have been among the passengers sitting on the left-hand, southward facing, side of United Flight 175.