American Airlines Flight 11 departed from Boston as a regular
passenger flight. Soon after the departure, it was officially
hijacked by five Middle Eastern terrorists, one pilot familiar with
small planes and four "muscle hijackers". The terrorists killed
some crew and passengers, and in a combined act of murder and
suicide they directed the airplane into the WTC North Tower.
This "official" version of what happened on September 11, 2001, has
been challenged by many people. Here is a short and incomplete list
of objections, most of them still not addressed by officials
responsible for the clearing up of the crime:
- The names of the hijackers don't appear on the passenger list
- There is no video footage of the hijackers passing the security
check at the airport
- The flying skills of the alleged pilot Mohammed Atta were hardly
sufficient to hit the Tower
- The hijackers didn't choose the optimal flight path, i.e., the
shortest way to New York City (more...)
- The life conduct of at least some of the hijackers don't point to
an Islamistic background, but to sex&drugs&rock'n roll
- The phone calls from the airplane which are meant to be the
strongest proof for a hijacking are not genuine
- Some or all of the missed passengers of Flight 11 embarked on the
wrong plane
The sheer amount of unexplained contradictions has inevitably led
to the development of alternative scenarios for Flight 11, usually
embedded in a scenario for the whole 9/11 attacks.
The story of Flight 11 as I present it here avoids the numerous
weaknesses of the official version and is empirically better
grounded than the existing alternative versions. It is not a
scientific, but a criminalistic approach, meant to stimulate
researchers to look at new, promising traces left back by the
perpetrators of the attacks.
The article consists of two parts. Part I is a comprehensive
timeline for Flight 11. In Part II, the timeline will be explained
and discussed in more detail.
Part I - The Timeline
Normal letters indicate commonly acknowledged, generally well
documented facts. Italic letters indicate comments, conclusions and
conjectures to create a lucid picture of the story of Flight 11.
All times are EDT.
The embarking of the "hijackers"
September 10, Boston Logan
Airport
3:43 p.m.
American Airlines Flight 196, coming from San
Francisco, arrives at the gate. The airplane's tail number is
N334AA. The next day, it will achieve sad prominence as Flight 11.
BTS
data
base
4:25 p.m.
A white Mitsubishi Mirage is recorded by
surveillance cameras while entering the parking lot.
In the evening of the next day, this car will towed away by the FBI
for examining. They will find flight manuals in arabic language, a
koran copy, and an airline crew tag. Boston
Globe,
9/23/01There
are three persons from Middle Eastern descent
in the car, the driver and the two coming pilots of Flight 11,
hereafter refered to as "thieves".
4:45 p.m.The thieves embark on N334AA as
usual
passengers, which is scheduled to leave at 5:10 p.m as Flight 197,
with destination San Franciso.
5:05 p.m.After having said goodbye to
his fellows, the
driver leaves the airport. The
Mitsubishi is recorded again by
a security camera. Boston
Globe,
9/23/01
5:12 p.m.
N334AA pushes back from the gate. BTS
data base
The preparation flights
September 10/11, Boston, San
Francisco, and in between
11:47 p.m.
N334AA arrives in San Francisco. It has just a
short stay. BTS
data base
12:49 a.m.
N334AA departs for Boston as Flight 198. BTS
data baseThe thieves are still
aboard. Somehow they manage to stay in the cabin - maybe they hided
somewhere (not likely), maybe they presented an explanation to the
crew why the had to fly back immediately. It's also possible that
one of them was in the cockpit on the jump seat, a common service
of the airlines for foreign pilots.
6:03 a.m.
N334AA arrives at Gate 32, Terminal B, Logan
Airport. About 40 passengers and the crew disembark form the plane.
Karen
BoothThe
thieves stay. Like in San Francisco, the question
is how did they do this, and the possible answers are the
same.
The departure
September 11, Boston Logan
Airport
Between 6.03 a.m. and 7:45 a.m.After the thieves are
sure that they are the only persons left on N334AA, they prepare
for the unusual flight that lies before them. One thing they do is
to disable ACARS, a system used for data communications with the
airline. That's why the
departure data don't appear in the data
base of the Bureau for Transportation Statistics (BTS) which gets
this information via ACARS. BTS
7:45 a.m.
The thieves ask the tower for departure clearing
and push back a few seconds later. New
York Times, 9/16/01They
pretend to work on a normal
passenger flight.
7:45 a.m.
Al Filipov, passenger of Flight 11, calls his wife
from the Admiral's club of AA to tell her that he has switched from
Delta Airlines to American Airlines. He is NOT aboard N334AA.
Filipov's Flight 11 is supposed to depart from Gate 26 and is
delayed. That's why he has enough time to call his wife.
CBS News, 9/13/01
Between 7:45 a.m. and 7:59 a.m.
N334AA is taxiing to runway
9R along taxiways A, N, K, S, A, K1, B. New
York Times, 9/16/01
September 11, the skies over
Massachusetts and New York
State
8:14 a.m.The thieves begin to pretend a
hijacking.
They stop talking with the controllers and don't react when they
are ordered to climb.
Paul Thompson
8:20 a.m.Next step of the fake:
The airplane
deviates drastically from its projected course.
Paul Thompson
8:21 a.m.Next step of the fake:
The transponder is
turned off.
Paul Thompson
8:25 a.m.
The thieves send a message over the air traffic
control channel which is seemingly meant for the (not existing)
passengers: "Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to
make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just
stay quiet."
Paul ThompsonBut
this is just the next step of the deceit:
In doing this, they convince the air controllers that the airplane
is hijacked, avoiding direct communication with them.
8:27 a.m.
N334AA reaches the Northern edge of his flight
path and turns South.
Paul ThompsonThe
thieves decide to begin their rush towards
New York City. They know that around this time a remote controlled
plane is started in Poughkeepsie,
70 miles north of the
city. Their task is to run up to
this plane so that they cross
the heart of New York City at the same moment when the remote
controlled plane crashes into the North Tower.
8:28 a.m.
The thieves begin to push the radio button
intermittently. Paul
Thompson They want to confuse the
controllers and strengthen their
believe that the hijacking is going on.
These intermittent
transmissions are repeated until 8:38.
The overflight
September 11, the skies over
New York City
8:40 a.m.
Ronkonkoma controllers are tracking the path of
N334AA, but they don't know its altitude. New
York Times, 9/16/01
8:46 a.m.The plane from Poughkeepsie
crashes into the
North Tower. The Ronkonkoma
controllers still think that N334AA
is in the air. Only after the crash of UA 175 they will learn that
both WTC towers have been hit. New
York
Times, 9/13/01
The phantom flight
September 11, the skies over
New Jersey
9:21 a.m.
Washington Air controllers inform their colleagues
from Boston Center that Flight 11 is still in the air, somewhere in
Southern New Jersey or even more South. 9/11
report, p.
32
9:24 a.m.
NEADS scrambles fighters from Langley AFB to
search for Flight 11. 9/11
report, p. 32
The landing(Attention! Highly speculative!)
September 11, Reagan National
Airport, Washington D.C.
9:37 p.m.N334AA lands at Reagan National
Airport at the
same time the pentagon is hit by another flying object.
Who's done it?
This question will be discussed
in
PART II.) Re: World
Premiere New WoodyBox: How to
steal an airliner an "The first outside word that controllers
received was that a small twin-engine plane had hit one tower of
the World Trade Center. They thought it was a twin-engine Cessna
that had taken off earlier from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to fly south
under "visual flight rules," meaning the plane was not under direct
air traffic control."
