Hani Hanjour - Attacks

Attacks

On September 11, 2001, Hani Hanjour arrived at the passenger security checkpoint at 7:35 am, en route to board American Airlines Flight 77. Some earlier reports stated he may not have had a ticket or appeared on any manifest, however he was documented by the 9/11 Commission as having been assigned to seat 1B in first class, and reported to have bought a single first-class ticket from Advance Travel Service in Totowa, N.J. In the security tape footage released in 2004, Hanjour appears to walk through the metal detector without setting it off.

The flight was scheduled to depart at 8:10, but ended up departing 10 minutes late from Gate D26 at Dulles. The last normal radio communications from the aircraft to air traffic control occurred at 08:50:51. At 08:54, Flight 77 began to deviate from its normal, assigned flight path and turned south, and then hijackers set the flight's autopilot heading for Washington, D.C. Passenger Barbara Olson called her husband, United States Solicitor General Ted Olson, and reported that the plane had been hijacked and that the assailants had box cutters and knives. Using the flight intercom, Hanjour announced the flight was hijacked. As Flight 77 was 5 miles (8.0 km) west-southeast of the Pentagon, it made a 330-degree turn. At the end of the turn, it was descending through 2,200 feet (670 m), pointed toward the Pentagon and downtown Washington. Hanjour advanced the throttles to maximum power and dove towards the Pentagon at a speed of over 850 km/h. At 09:37:46, Hanjour crashed the Boeing 757 into the west facade of the Pentagon, killing all 64 aboard (including the hijackers), along with 125 on the ground in the Pentagon. While level above the ground and seconds from the crash, the airplane's wings knocked over light poles and its right engine smashed into a power generator, creating a smoke trail seconds before smashing into the Pentagon. In the recovery process at the Pentagon, remains of all five Flight 77 hijackers were identified through a process of elimination, as not matching any DNA samples for the victims, and put into custody of the FBI.