by Mac Daniel
The Boston Globe
August 13, 2002

For 11 terrifying minutes last Sept. 11, New York and Boston air traffic controllers knew the grim future - that United Airlines Flight 175, with 65 passengers and loaded with fuel, had settled into a fast low-altitude approach as it zeroed in on the World Trade Center.

There was little they could do. Just minutes earlier an American Airlines flight out of Boston had crashed into the Trade Center's north tower. The United flight was still in the air and far off course. Other planes spotted it heading for New York, its green radar blip having gone dead, the connection suddenly severed by the actions of someone in the cockpit.

It was an event recalled for the first time yesterday by air traffic managers and controllers with the Federal Aviation Administration. They described their feelings as an intense sense of helplessness.

''Probably one of the most difficult moments in my life was the 11 minutes from the point I watched that aircraft when we first lost communication to the point that aircraft hit the World Trade Center,'' Michael McCormick, the FAA's New York air traffic manager, said in a press conference in which air traffic controllers in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., made their first extensive public comments since the attacks.

''For those 11 minutes, I knew - we knew - what was going to happen, and that was difficult,'' McCormick said.

Boston air traffic controllers, working out of FAA regional headquarters in Nashua said they first detected something was amiss when the American flight disappeared from their screens, apparently because of action in the cockpit. In fact, as they soon discovered, it had taken a left turn for New York.

The American flight had left Logan Airport bound for Los Angeles at 8 a.m. and was given permission to climb to 35,000 feet when communications with the Boeing 767 went silent and it disappeared from the radar screen.

When air traffic controllers asked pilots in the area to visually locate the flight, it was United Airlines Flight 175, which had taken off from Boston 14 minutes after the American flight, that radioed a reply. The United crew reported that Flight 11 was still in the air at about 29,000 feet, despite a curious radio silence, they said.

Therefore, ''we considered it at that time to be a possible hijacking,'' air traffic manager Glenn Michael recalled yesterday at Logan.

At 8:40, six minutes before the American flight crashed, the FAA notified the military's Northeast Air Defense Sector that they suspected the flight had been hijacked. Three minutes later, the military was told that FAA controllers believed the United flight had been hijacked as well.

Three minutes after that, the American flight crashed into the north tower.

''Once it became obvious what was actually transpiring, air traffic controllers reacted much like Americans reacted across the entire nation, with shock, with disbelief, with just stunned surprise that such acts could occur,'' said Joseph Davies, air traffic manager at Logan.

From that point on, in an effort to thwart any other possible hijackings, air traffic controllers shut down the nation's airspace in a mere 4 hours and 15 minutes, starting minutes after the second plane smashed into the south tower at 9:03 a.m.

It was an amazing feat, officials said. The FAA yesterday showed a nationwide radar image taken at 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 11 that showed the skies over most of America, especially the Eastern Seaboard, filled with approximately 4,500 airplanes.

By approximately 12:15 p.m. airspace over the lower 48 states was cleared of all commercial and private flights, with no accidents or mishaps reported during the mammouth operation, the nation's first unplanned shutdown of US airspace.

In New York, McCormick and Frank Hatfield, the FAA's Eastern Region Air Traffic Division manager, praised controllers for remaining calm. Hatfield described the desperate search to find the hijacked planes like ''looking for a needle in a haystack.'' After radar contact was lost with several of the planes, airborne pilots and crews were asked by controllers to provide visual sightings. Those who saw the American flight after the hijacking described it as going ''low and fast.''

Although yesterday's FAA press conferences offered some new insight into the workings of air traffic controllers that day, questions about detailed communications from the hijacked planes was avoided, with FAA officials saying that information remains under investigation.

Contact with agencies outside of the FAA was crucial on Sept. 11. Since then, the FAA has implemented improved communications between their regional control centers and key government agencies, such as the Department of Defense, North American Aerospace Defense Command, and the Office of Homeland Security, officials said.

''We have shaved that communications process from a period of minutes to a period of seconds,'' Hatfield said.

© Copyright 2002 Boston Globe Electronic Publishing Inc.

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