American Airlines Flight 77

From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project

Security camera image of the moment that American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

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.

AA 77 flight path from Dulles to Pentagon (to east of Dulles).

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, D.C. at 9:37 AM EDT, killing all of its 58 passengers (including the hijackers) and 6 crew. 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. One hundred twenty-five people in the Pentagon died from the attack.

The main impact zone of the crash was approximately 19 metres (57 feet) in width. Little wreckage was found from the airliner within this impact zone or inside the building. Most of the fiberglass and other flammable materials were almost certainly vaporized by the fireball which resulted from the explosion of jet fuel upon impact and the resulting fire, which also would have placed a strain on metallic materials. (A similar intense heat is claimed to have caused the collapse of both towers of the World Trade Center.) Those pieces which would not have burned up were dispersed in the explosion or smashed into smaller pieces by the collapse of the upper floors of the building. Pieces of fuselage were found some 30 metres (90 feet) away from the crash site. As opposed to the extremely tall World Trade Center, the Pentagon is a much smaller building, and thus the flight was forced to dive low enough, according to multiple eyewitness accounts, to glance off the ground before hitting the Pentagon, which absorbed much of the impact of the crash. Within the main impact zone was a hole that the object punched in the building, approximately 9 metres (27 feet) in width. The Pentagon is composed of five concentric rings. Thanks to the thick limestone walls and the sturdiness of building materials being used in the renovations at the time, Flight 77 fully penetrated only the outer three rings, although it caused damage to all five rings. At the end of the third ring was a circular 'punch out' hole, again 9 metres (27 feet) in diameter. The wingspan of a Boeing 757 is 38 metres (114 feet). These wings were most likely broken off and destroyed in the explosion, fire and collapse, although blackened sections of the building, visible in photographs, seem to have been caused by the impact of the burning wings.

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.[1]. However, many other 9/11 researchers agree that Flight 77 did indeed hit the Pentagon.[2],[3],[4].

• These theories conflict with over 100 eyewitness testimonies which describe a commercial jet impacting the building. However, some other witnesses claim to have seen a smaller jet, and others still claim to have seen a missile. [5]

Discrepancies in "official" accounts

• Following September 11, Salem al-Hazmi was found alive and well in Saudi Arabia. He claims to have never visited the United States. [6]
• Khalid al-Mihdhar is also reportedly still alive. [7]
• Official accounts of in-flight calls made by the passengers to their loved ones describing the hijacking are of undetermined veracity. Evidence does not support the ability to make a successful cellphone call from a moving airplane above 30,000 ft without additional transmitting equipment [8].

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)
• [9] - Urban Legends Reference Pages debunking of Flight 77 conspiracy theories.

Copyright

"Original data received from Wikipedia on April 21, 2006. Credit given to original authors can be seen Here."