Boston Realizes with Certainty that Flight 11 Has Been Hijacked

[Archangel]

According to Terry Biggio, the operations manager at the FAA's Boston Center, the center initially thought Flight 11 "was a catastrophic electrical failure and... was diverting to New York" (see (8:21 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Federal Aviation Administration, 10/19/2002]

However, at about 8:24 a.m., controllers heard two radio transmissions from it, with the voice of a hijacker declaring, "We have some planes" (see 8:24 a.m. September 11, 2001). Pete Zalewski, who is handling Flight 11, says that after the second of these: "I immediately knew something was very wrong. And I knew it was a hijack." He alerts his supervisor. Lino Martins, another Boston air traffic controller, says, "the supervisor came over, and that's when we realized something was serious." [Christian Science Monitor, 9/13/2001; MSNBC, 9/11/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]

However, two senior FAA officials—Bill Peacock and David Canoles—later say that the hijacker transmissions were not attributed to a flight, so controllers didn't know their origin. [Washington Times, 9/11/2002]

An early FAA report will similarly refer to them as having come "from an unknown origin." But right away, the center begins notifying the chain of command that a suspected hijacking is taking place (see 8:25 a.m. September 11, 2001). [Federal Aviation Administration, 9/17/2001 pdf file]

However, some reports claim that controllers decided Flight 11 was probably hijacked earlier than this, by about 8:20 a.m. (see (8:20 a.m.) September 11, 2001).