Boston Flight Control Tells Other Centers about Hijack, but Not NORAD

[Archangel]

Boston flight control reportedly "notifies several air traffic control centers that a hijack is taking place." [Guardian, 10/17/2001]

This is immediately after Boston controllers heard a transmission from Flight 11, declaring, "We have some planes" (see 8:24 a.m. September 11, 2001), and would be consistent with a claim later made to the 9/11 Commission by Mike Canavan, the FAA's associate administrator for civil aviation security. He says, "[M]y experience as soon as you know you had a hijacked aircraft, you notify everyone.... [W]hen you finally find out, yes, we do have a problem, then... the standard notification is it kind of gets broadcast out to all the regions." [9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003]

An early FAA report will say only that Boston controllers begin "inter-facility coordination" with New York air traffic control at this time [Federal Aviation Administration, 9/17/2001 pdf file] , but the New York Times reports that controllers at Washington Center also know "about the hijacking of the first plane to crash, even before it hit the World Trade Center." [New York Times, 9/13/2001]

However, the Indianapolis flight controller monitoring Flight 77 claims to not know about this or Flight 175's hijacking twenty minutes later at 8:56 a.m. (see 8:56 a.m. September 11, 2001). Additionally, the flight controllers at New York City's La Guardia airport are never told about the hijacked planes and learn about them from watching the news. [Bergen Record, 1/4/2004]

Boston Center also begins notifying the FAA chain of command of the suspected Flight 11 hijacking at this time (see 8:25 a.m. September 11, 2001), but it does not notify NORAD for another 6-15 minutes, depending on the account (see (8:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001).