September 11, 2001 Research & Archives

Craig Marquis, the manager on duty at the American Airlines System Operations Control (SOC) center in Fort Worth, Texas, instructs Bill Halleck, an air traffic control specialist at the SOC, to tell FAA air traffic controllers to treat Flight 11 as an emergency. [American Airlines, 9/11/2001, pp. 7-19; 9/11 Commission, 11/19/2003 pdf file; 9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 14]

Halleck contacted the FAA's Boston Center at 8:29 a.m. to inquire about Flight 11 (see 8:29 a.m. September 11, 2001), and at 8:33 a.m. he called Marquis and passed on what he had just learned from the Boston Center about the crisis with the aircraft (see 8:33 a.m. September 11, 2001). That information, according to the 9/11 Commission, led American Airlines to suspect that Flight 11 had been hijacked. [9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 11-12]

Marquis now instructs Halleck, "Tell [air traffic control] to handle this as an emergency." According to a 9/11 Commission memorandum, "At this point, Marquis was just confirming it was a hijack and he wanted to make sure Halleck was communicating the emergency to the [air traffic control] system." Halleck answers that FAA controllers are treating Flight 11 as a hijacking, saying, "They have in there, it's been hijacked." Marquis replies: "It is. Okay." Halleck adds that FAA controllers "don't know what his altitude is... they think he's descending. They think he's headed toward Kennedy [JFK International Airport in New York]... they're moving everybody out of the way." Referring to Betty Ong, a flight attendant on Flight 11, Marquis tells Halleck, "I'm talking to the flight attendant in the back of the plane and she says the plane is descending." [American Airlines, 9/11/2001, pp. 7-19; American Airlines, 1/15/2002; 9/11 Commission, 11/19/2003 pdf file]