An Alternate Perspective On 9/11: The Actual Aircraft Radio Traffic

CONNECTICUT — For starters, this is not the typical column I publish on my Patch sites. However, I was searching YouTube for something last night when I inadvertently came across this piece, which, despite me being a big-time history buff, I had never heard or seen before.

This clip, published on YouTube by the Gloucester County (NJ) Fire Department, contains an amalgam of actual aircraft radio traffic on Sept. 11, 2001. It includes interactions between air traffic controllers (ATCs) and pilots of the doomed planes which were about to be hijacked and used as weapons of mass destruction. Also included are discussions involving officials from the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and high-ranking officers from Otis Air Force Base.

When I first stumbled across the piece, I figured I'd listen for a few minutes, then continue my original search. However, I instantly became hooked on the unfolding drama, particularly the ATCs whose voice inflections changed from routine commands to take off and turn, to puzzlement at the sudden loss of communication with the pilots, to controlled panic when the gravity of the situation became evident. Somehow they managed to maintain total professionalism in the face of what would become an unthinkable tragedy. I wound up glued to to the entire 100-minute presentation.

The unresponsiveness of American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be taken over by the terrorists, led to ATCs asking other aircraft in the area to try spotting him. Ironically, his position was reported by the pilot of United Flight 175 just moments before his plane was hijacked and he was killed.

Other dramatic moments include two of the hijackers pressing a wrong button, thinking they were addressing the passengers when in fact they were transmitting their words to ATCs. The confusing orders to scramble fighter jets out of Otis, the relaying of information from a flight attendant on American Flight 11 moments before it slammed into the World Trade Center, and the briefly-heard struggle between hijackers and brave passengers on United Flight 93 shortly before it crashed into a field in Shanksville, PA will also be forever etched in my memory.

Northern Connecticut, where I reside, sustained a loss with the deaths of Amy King and Michael Tarrou, a couple from Stafford who both were flight attendants on United Flight 175. It is important to remember their family, and the families of nearly 3,000 more victims of that awful day, will once again have a void at their dinner table this holiday season.