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911 panel hears crew members call Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/28/911_panel_hears_crew_members_call/http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/28/911_panel_hears_crew_members_call/
9/11 panel hears crew member's call
Calm voice told how hijackers terrorized flight
By Laura Sullivan, Baltimore Sun, 1/28/2004
WASHINGTON -- The tape of Betty Ong's voice yesterday, urgent yet amazingly calm, describing through the background buzz how a group of hijackers had stabbed two of her fellow flight attendants and taken over the first plane that slammed in the World Trade Center, silenced the congressional hearing room.
"The cockpit is not answering the phone. Someone's coming. Another one got stabbed. Our first class gal's stabbed, our purser has been stabbed. We can't get inside the cockpit," Ong, 45, who lived in Andover, told an American reservations specialist in a call from the rear phone aboard American Airlines Flight 11.
For the first time in two days of official testimony from more than two dozen government administrators, aviation security experts, and law enforcement personnel, the 9/11 commission members investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had nothing to say.
Ong's voice, captured on tape, broke only when the aircraft would suddenly plunge at the hands of inexperienced pilots who had taken over the cockpit. The tape of her call offered some of the first insight and an all too real account of what was happening aboard the four hijacked airplanes that morning, and lasted until her plane flew with explosive force into a Trade Center tower.
While her conversation was the most dramatic new revelation at the hearing, commission investigators also released a nine-page report yesterday that said the hijackers probably sprayed mace around the cockpit area on all four flights, apparently to keep passengers away, and that they convinced passengers to sit quietly on at least one of the flights by announcing over the intercom that there was a bomb on board.
Investigators believe the hijackers may have also used autopilot and a global positioning system to target the Trade Center and the Pentagon. The report said the flight data recorder found buried in the rubble of the Pentagon indicated the pilot "had input autopilot instructions for a route to Reagan National Airport."
On Ong's flight, the hijackers appeared to have killed at least one passenger -- and possibly two -- before taking over the aircraft.
The tape recording picks up mid-sentence after an unidentified -- and somewhat impatient -- reservations specialist, had answered the phone.
"The cockpit's not answering the phone," Ong tells the man. "Somebody's been stabbed in business class, and, um, I think there's mace, and we can't breathe, and I don't know, I think we're getting hijacked."
The man replies, "What seat are you in?" apparently unaware that Ong is a flight attendant.
"Ma'am, are you there?"
"Yes," Ong says, who was having trouble hearing the man.
"What seat are you in?" the man asks, and then again forcefully. "Ma'am, what seat are you in?"
We're out of "Boston, we're up in the air. The cockpit is not answering the phone," Ong says urgently.
The man replies, "What seat are you in?"
After a pause, Ong says, "I'm in my jump seat right now."
At that point the man seems to realize she is a flight attendant, but still does not address what Ong has told him. He pauses and then asks, "What is your name?"
"OK, my name is Betty Ong. I'm an employee on Flight 11. The cockpit is not answering their phone. There is somebody stabbed in business. We can't breathe in business class. I think they have mace or something. Somebody's coming back. Can you hold on for one second? Somebody's coming back.
"OK, our No. 1 [flight attendant] got stabbed. Our purser is stabbed. There is no air in business class. No one can breathe. Our first class gal and our purser has been stabbed. We can't get into the cockpit. The door won't open."
After a long pause, Ong says, "Hello?"
The man responds, "Yeah. I'm taking it down, all the information. "
About a minute later the man's boss, Nydia Gonzalez, takes over the phone call. Commission investigators credited Gonzalez and Ong yesterday for relaying as much information as they did, largely by way of a three-party conversation with the American Airlines emergency operations center in Dallas, with Gonzalez acting as an intermediary.
In a staff report to committee members, investigators said it was because of Ong's call that they learned about the mace.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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