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[Image] Part two: More planes missing
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The skies in lock-down

At yet another air traffic control center in Cleveland,
Stacey Taylor is keeping a close eye on her flights. The
FAA is warning controllers to watch transcontinental
flights headed west, for anything suspicious. And then,
something very suspicious does happen.
“I hear one of the controllers behind me go, ‘Oh my
God, oh my God,’ says Stacy Taylor. “And he starts yelling
for the supervisor. He goes what is this plane doing, what
is this plane doing? I wasn’t that busy at the time, and I
pulled it up on my screen. And he was climbing and
descending and climbing and descending but very, gradually.
He’d go up 300 feet, and he’d go down 300 feet. And it
turned out to be United 93.”
By this time United Airlines has warned crews still
in the air about the potential for a hijacking. Electronic
messages — similar to an e-mail, have been transmitted to
pilots. “Beware, cockpit intrusion” the message read. The
pilots of flight 93 typed back, “confirmed”.
At the Boston center, controllers are taking matters
into their own hands to safeguard crews.

Tom Roberts: “I saw controllers step up to the plate
and start warning flight crews. This was totally by the
seat of their pants. It’s not because they were directed to
by anybody. It’s just, OK, everybody’s on alert right now.”
Tom Brokaw: “Watch for cockpit intrusion? That kind
of thing?”
Tom Roberts: “Absolutely. And I’m like, ‘Yes go for
it.”

And in New York, controllers brace themselves for
another possible assault on their airspace.

Tom Brokaw: “Did you keep thinking, ‘My God, there
may be another target coming in here at some point?’”
John Smith: “Yes, yes. It was definitely on my mind.
I was wondering what else was going to get hit? How many
more times this would happen? Where would it happen?”
John Riccardi: “But at that point it was, ‘What was
next?’

9:3o AM: At Washington’s Dulles Airport, controllers
also on high alert. But what they don’t know is that one of
their own flights is now missing — American 77.
Flight 77 has been out of contact with controllers
in Indianapolis for more than 20 minutes. Fighter jets are
dispatched to track the flight, but the plane already has
turned east, flying back over West Virginia, toward
Washington, DC. Todd Lewis is working radar at Dulles
Airport.

Todd Lewis: “One of my colleagues, saw a primary
target moving quite fast from northwest to the southeast.
So, we all started watching that target. And she notified
the supervisor. But nobody knew that was a commercial
flight at the time. Nobody knew that was American 77.”
Tom Brokaw: “What did you think, it was a military
flight of some kind —
Todd Lewis: “I thought it was a military flight. I
thought that Langley had scrambled some fighters and maybe
one of them got up there.”
Tom Brokaw: “It was really moving fast.”
Todd Lewis: “It was moving very fast, like a
military aircraft might move at a low altitude.”
Tom Brokaw: “How long were you able to track what
turned out to be American?”
Todd Lewis: “It was heading right towards a
prohibited area in downtown Washington. And that covers the
Capitol and the White House. We then called the White House
on the hotline, and let them know.”

Controllers activate a hotline to the secret
service, and within seconds, agents are frantically
evacuating the White House. The president is in Florida,
but the Secret Service whisks Vice President Dick Cheney
into an underground bunker.
“Then it turned south and away from the prohibited
area, which seemed like a momentary sigh of relief,” says
Todd Lewis. “And it disappeared. But it was going away from
Washington, which seemed to be the right thing.”
But at 9:38 AM, the plane does strike, crashing into
the Pentagon.

Tom Brokaw: “And what did you think when you heard
the Pentagon had been struck?”
Todd Lewis: “Then there was no question that yes, it
was a commercial flight. And you’re wondering, ‘We’re being
attacked. What’s next?’”

Washington, DC is where United flight 93 soon will
be headed. As American flight 77 was breaching Washington’s
airspace to eventually hit the Pentagon, back in the skies
over Youngstown, Ohio, flight 93 still is on course, now
airborne for more than 50 minutes. But now, Stacey Taylor
and other controllers watch the plane suddenly start to
climb. The controller working flight 93 tries to contact
the cockpit.
“I was afraid of that flight,” says Stacey Taylor.
“I see this plane climbed up from his assigned altitude of
35-thousand feet to 41,000 feet. Turned around and aimed
right back at where we were and descended rapidly. And when
a plane descends too fast, the computer can’t keep up with
it. And you get X’s in the altitude box. So we knew he was
aimed at us and descending very, very rapidly. At that
point I knew it was a confirmed hijacking. I didn’t know
where they were going, what they were doing. I was worried
that we were a target — that the center was a target. I
remember looking at the ceiling and thinking, ‘Here, you
know, here it comes.’”

We have all shuddered at the thought of what must
have been going on in the cockpits of those hijacked
airliners. It turns out the Cleveland controller working
flight 93 at the time, along with a supervisors, actually
heard the sounds of the struggle in the cockpit.

Stacey Taylor: “I said, ‘Did you guys talk to him?’
He goes, ‘Yes, we talked to him.’ I said, “What did the
pilot-’ He said, “It wasn’t the pilots,” he said, “It was
the hijackers.’ I said, ‘The hijackers?’ I said, “Are you
telling me the hijackers were talking to you on the
frequency?’ He said, ‘The pilot opened up the mike before.’
He said, ‘We heard it all.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, “We
heard them being killed.” He said, ‘We heard.’ And I said,
I said, “Don’t tell me any more.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to
know anymore.”

And as upsetting as this is, there is still more
going on inside Cleveland center.
A false alarm involving another Delta flight en
route to Cleveland has officials ordering evacuations.
“They’re evacuating the city of Cleveland,” says
Taylor. “They’re evacuating the center as we’re doing all
this too.”
Flight 93 will not strike the Cleveland center.
Instead, like the other three planes before it, it makes a
radical turn. Hijackers then shut off flight 93’s
transponder signal, just as they had on the other three
planes. Controllers can now only see a moving “target” on
radar. They have no other flight information.
Back at Newark tower, where flight 93 took off only
an hour before, Bob Varcadipane is trading phone calls with
the FAA’s central command center in Herndon, Virginia. The
command center is telling him there are at least ten planes
they’re still suspicious of for one reason or another — all
possible hijackings.

Bob Varcadipane: “When I talked to the command
center again, he told me that another aircraft was being
hijacked. And he said, “As a matter of fact, it’s one of
your airplanes.”
Tom Brokaw: “But you had a hard time believing that
at the beginning?”
Bob Varcadipane: “I couldn’t believe it at all. I
was like, ‘What is going on?’”
Greg Callahan: “We were tracking United 93 and I was
in conversation with the FBI agent and he was relaying to
me that we suspect that this aircraft has now been taken
over by hostile forces, described the sharp turn it made
over eastern Ohio and now was heading back along
southwestern Pennsylvania. And I could tell just by giving
it a visual track that it was obviously heading for the
Washington, DC area.”

As flight 93 speeds towards Washington, D.C, the
Federal Aviation Administration does something
unprecedented in aviation history. Officials at the FAA
command center order that the national airspace be
completely shut down — the grounding of every single
civilian plane in the sky.
An FAA animation shows what the skies look like at
9:45 AM, September 11, 2001. Controllers in the Boston and
New York areas have already landed more than 1,000 planes
from the Boston and New York air corridors. There are still
3,949 planes in the air. Controllers must still land every
single one as quickly as they can at the nearest possible
airport, no matter how far from their intended destination.
The controllers begin re-routing the planes at the rate of
one every second.

Tom Brokaw: “And people were landing out here in
Lacrosse, Wisconsin, and Peoria, Illinois.
Bob Varcadipane: “Oh, they were landing all over the
country. This whole system, basically just shut down.”
Tom Brokaw: “It looks like a daisy field and
suddenly it goes dark.”

At the Cleveland center, Stacey Taylor is busy
diverting planes to land but can’t stop thinking about
flight 93.

Tom Brokaw: “You’re keeping your eye on Flight 93 at
this point?”
Stacey Taylor: “Yes. And then the transponder came
back on. We got two hits off the transponder. That’s
something we’ve always wanted to know. Why did the
transponder come back on? Because the hijackers had shut it
off so that they couldn’t be tracked, even though we were
still tracking them. Now we were getting an altitude read
out on the airplane. I can’t remember the precise numbers
but it was around 6,400 feet, and then around 59 or 5,800
feet. And we’re thinking, ‘Oh, you know? Maybe something’s
happened. Maybe this isn’t what we think it is.’”

But minutes later, at 10:03, the transponder shuts
off again. Flight 93 disappears from radar.

Stacey Taylor: “I had another airplane that I was
working. And I told him, I said, ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I think we
have an aircraft down.’ I said, ‘This is entirely up to
you, but if you’d be willing to fly over the last place
that we spotted this airplane and see if you can see
anything. Any smoke, any, you know, anything.’ And he’s,
‘Yes, we’ll do that.’ So he flew over and at first he
didn’t see anything and then he said, ‘We see a great big
plume or a cloud of smoke.”
Tom Brokaw: “You knew it was down.”
Stacey Taylor: “We knew.”

A number of heroic passengers had launched their own
counterattack on the cockpit, preventing the plane from
reaching its presumed target — the nation’s capital.

Stacey Taylor: “I know there’s been talk about — if
United 93 was shot down. United 93 was not shot down. I
would have known, I would have seen that.
Tom Brokaw: “Did you see any of the fighters around
Flight 93?”
Stacey Taylor: “There were no fighters around Flight
United 93. No, because I wanted to know why there weren’t
fighters on him. And from the way I understand it, if
they’d have gone any closer to Washington, then they would
have been intercepted. But at the time the flight went
down, no, there was no one on him.”

10:30 AM: The FAA’s view of the national airspace:
in just 45 minutes controllers have safely landed almost
2500 planes. But there are still more than 1500 in the air
and each one is a potential weapon.
Controllers still fear that other attacks are
planned. Speculation centers on the sears tower in Chicago,
or other landmarks in the nation’s capital — even Air Force
One. The president’s plane still is in the air, and
controllers worry it could be the next target.

LOCK DOWN IN THE SKIES
The airspace above the United States is in a lock
down. Controllers are furiously diverting planes to land at
the nearest possible airport. And aside from military
aircraft, only one other plane is allowed to take off. Air
Force one, the plane known as the flying oval office. In
fact, the secret service is purposely keeping the president
on the move, and away from Washington.
Tom Brokaw: “You remember hearing about Air Force
One about where it was and where it was going?”
Bob Varcadapane: “Yes, we knew where it was. We were
tracking it at 11:00 AM Air Force One still is on the move,
en route from Sarasota Florida, where the president had
been speaking to elementary school students that morning,
to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.
Tom Brokaw: “Was there some discussion in the room
about — man, Air Force One is still up there?”
Greg Callahan: “That was one of the potential
targets. That — factoring in the fact that as many as 10
aircraft were still potentially unaccounted for, and that
Air Force One was a potential target, as was the White
House, as was other — the capitol, Washington, D.C.”
Dan D’Agastino: “It was a war zone. Our skies were
turned into a war zone. Everywhere you turn it was military
jets and helicopters everywhere. And that’s when the
reality sank in. We’re at war.”
Tom Brokaw: “It was nuts.”
Greg Callahan: “Yes.”

11:30 AM: More than 3000 planes have landed safely.
But, there are more than 900 still to go.
Tom Brokaw: “How did you keep the concentration on
the other planes knowing what had happened here?”
Don Krivolavy: “It’s hard but you do it because
that’s what you’re trained to do.”

Finally, at 12:15 PM, four hours to the minute from
when controllers lost contact with that first airliner.
They have accomplished their mission. For the first time in
the history of air traffic control, dating back to 1938,
there is not a single civilian plane over the sky in the
U.S. Controllers have accounted for all the suspicious
planes. They wonder, but will never know, if there were
other hijackers with attacks planned that day — plans that
were derailed by their quick action.
“When the chips were down, they delivered,” says
John Carr, the president of the National Air Traffic
Controllers Association.
He presides over some 15,000 controllers nationwide.
“When you’re talking about an event that no one had
practiced, no one had trained for, no one had any idea
could possibly unfold before them,” he says, “to then shut
down the system in 2 1/2 hours, and land almost 5,000
airplanes without a single error, is a feat of airmanship
that I don’t think will ever be equaled.”
Until now, there has been no time to deal with
emotion. But with the airspace clear, the enormity of what
has happened — the staggering loss of life hits home.
“I broke down,” says Pete Zalewski. “I mean, I was
just — I broke down.”
At Boston Center, Pete Zalewski, the first
controller to handle a hijacked plane, maintaining
composure throughout it all, he finally, falls apart.”
“I started crying,” he says. “I couldn’t talk. I
started shaking. And I just said, ‘What’s wrong with the
world? What is happening?’”
There is more bad news for the Boston Center. One of
the controller’s wives had actually been on the American
Flight 11, the first plane to hit the World Trade Tower.

Tom Roberts: “Doug McKay’s wife was on American 11.”

Tom Brokaw: “Was he on duty?”
Tom Roberts: “Doug was actually on his way to work.
Doug had dropped his wife off at the airport.”
Don Krivolavy: “The individuals that worked with
Doug the evening before, knew that his wife was going to be
on American 11. And when they found out that American 11
had hit the towers, we stopped Doug at the door, and we
basically took him aside and brought him into another room.
And we went through — taking care of Doug. And it was
pretty, pretty tragic.”
Tom Brokaw: “That is part of the brotherhood and
sisterhood, isn’t it? You have to take care of each other
as well as take care of all those airplanes out there.”
Don Krivolavy: “It sure is.”
Tom Roberts: “And on that day, we lost Doug McKay
also. He can never work again. Not doing what he was doing
before.”

The skies over America would ultimately remain
closed down for three days to civilian aircraft.

Tom Brokaw: “When flights resumed and controllers
came back on duty in this room after September 11 what was
the tone?”
Dan D’Agastino: “Very somber. We were more worried
about what it had done to our — our industry. This is our
industry: the pilots, the controllers, the users. They’d
taken our industry and turned it into a complete mess that
nobody ever imagined.”

For many controllers, the coming days and weeks were
harder still — each shift a waiting game, with controllers
wondering, “Will there be a next time?” And if there is,
will we be able to stop it?

Dave Bottoglia: “Every little thing that happened I
was jumping up.”
Tom Brokaw: “And any tiny little glitch would
cause…”
Dave Bottoglia: “Oh, the stress was enormous.”

For Pete Zalewski it was difficult to come back at
all.
“For about a month I didn’t sleep,” he says. “I was
out of work for about six weeks, but I knew there was a
point where I would go back. I needed my life back.”
Even before 9/11, controllers in New York were no
strangers to tragedy. The crashes of TWA flight 800, Swiss
Air flight 111, and Egypt Air 990 all happened in or around
their airspace. And within weeks of September 11, tragedy
would strike again when another American plane, flight 587,
crashes on takeoff into a neighborhood in Queens.

Tom Brokaw: “Were you working that day?”
Curt Applegate: “Yes.”
Tom Brokaw: “What did you think when you heard
that?”
Curt Applegate: “I thought terrorism — had to be.”
Dean: “Everyone was kind of waiting for the next
shoe to drop. And I think everyone thought, ‘Well, all
right, we’re in the next phase of whatever it is they have
in store for us.’”

NEW RULES
But investigators now believe a failure of
structure, not terrorism, caused the crash of American
flight 587 in Queens.
While a year has now safely passed, the shadow of
September 11, still hangs over them.

John Smith: “Every time an aircraft doesn’t do
exactly what you tell them, it brings up the thought of
what could happen now and what’s going to happen, what is
he doing, why is he doing this, why is he not answering and
it brings it right back, every time.”
Tom Brokaw: “How much do you worry about the new
rules that fighter aircraft may have to shoot down a
civilian airliner at some point? Hard to imagine, isn’t
it?”
Bob Varcadapane: “Yes.”
Dan D’Agastino: “If it’s hard for us, can you
imagine how hard it is for that fighter pilot?”
Bob Varcadapane: “That fighter pilot — decision he
has to make?”
Tom Brokaw: “Have you been briefed about those
contingencies?”
Dan D’Agastino: “We have contingency plans that
we’ve been briefed on.”
Tom Brokaw: “Told to keep it secret?”
Dan D’Agastino: “Pretty much, yes.”
Bob Varcadapane : “We’d have to kill you if we told
you.”
Tom Brokaw: “Well, let’s not go that far. But that’s
a stark new reality in your life, correct? That an American
fighter jet might have to shoot down an airliner filled
with civilians, because it’s been converted into a weapon
by someone.”
Greg Callahan: “Exactly.”
Tom Roberts: “It’s not only planes as weapons but
we’re also watching out for sensitive areas such as nuclear
power plants. You know — large.”
Lino Martins: “Stadiums, reservoirs.”
Tom Roberts: “Bridges and stuff like that. And
that’s added a new dimension to our job. We feel that we’re
every bit a part of this nation’s defense when it comes to
the skies, as anybody else. Because you know we’re going to
be the first line there.”

As today’s anniversary has approached, most of these
controllers have shied away from even reading about it, or
watching the coverage on television.
Dave Bottoglia: “I already know too much. Because I
watched the American disappear, the United disappeared —
and those were the first two. And I guess I’m the first one
to know it.”
Tom Brokaw: “It’s an honor you’d rather give up,
though, right?”
Dave Bottoglia: “Absolutely. I just think about all
those people and all the brave people that died there.”

He remains in awe of the timing of it all.

Dave Bottoglia: “How did they do such a coordinated
thing, that the American literally disappeared, and the
United literally got hijacked at almost the same time? And
I’ve always wondered if they were actually talking to each
other saying, ‘I’m going in now, good luck.’”
It’s the “what ifs” that plague the Newark
controllers. What if those fighter jets scrambled to
intercept the second plane had arrived just a bit earlier?
Bob Varcadapane: “I remember the two F-15’s — they
were moments after the impact. And I was just said to
myself, ‘If they only could’ve gotten there a couple
minutes earlier. They just missed it.’”
Greg Callahan: “But what would they have done?”
Tom Brokaw: “What do you think?”
Bob Varcadapane: “Yes.”
Tom Brokaw: “They would’ve done, though?”
Greg Callahan: “20/20 is hindsight.”
Bob Varcadapane: “I don’t know what they have done.”
Tom Brokaw: “They probably would have had to shoot
it down.”
Greg Callahan: “But back then, that only came from
the president.”
Bob Varcadapane: “Right.”

PERSONAL MEMORIES
What if flight 93, delayed so long on the runway at
Newark that morning, and had been delayed just a few
minutes more.
“A few minutes later it may not have made it off the
ground,” says BobVarcadapane. “It may not have made it at
all, unfortunately.”
Each of them struggles with personal memories —
moments, images, seared into their consciousness. They will
never forget them.
“I still can hear their voices,” says Peter Ender.
“That will never go away from me — just horrific, the
feeling of it. The voices, you knew they had control. You
knew they had control, and we didn’t and that was very
scary. Because as controllers you’re taught to have control
and there was none that day.”
They were the four darkest hours in aviation
history. But these controllers and their colleagues across
the U.S., met an unprecedented challenge that morning one
year ago. Their coolness kept other tragedies from
occurring, ensuring the safety of more than 350,000 people
in the air, countless more on the ground.

Tom Brokaw: “I know you have professional pride but
when you look back aren’t you a little astonished that it
went as well as it did?”
Mark DiPalmo: “The people that were working that day
did a phenomenal job. I mean the controllers in this
country are the best in the world and I’m proud to be one
of them.”
These men and women and their colleagues in air
traffic control centers across the country are much more on
our minds now.
We used to take them for granted. No more. Now we
have an insider’s appreciation of their critical role in
getting us off the ground and headed safely to our
destinations — or, in times of national emergency, out of
the air and back safely on the ground. September 11 was at
once the blackest day in their profession — and the
proudest. It was not their fault the airliners were
hijacked, but it was their coolness and resourcefulness
that cleared the air and kept other planes from mid-air
crashes. And as we learned, they did it with heart. We
can’t ask for more.

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