9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. September 11, 2001: United Airlines Receives False Reports of Threats

United Airlines receives numerous reports about threats and other emergencies, which turn out to be incorrect. Andrew Studdert, United Airlines’ chief operating officer, who spends much of the morning at the airline’s System Operations Control (SOC) center, near Chicago, will later describe some of these false threats. He will say that throughout the morning “there is a torrent of reported bomb threats” received by the airline. Additionally, he will say, there are “reports of other threats and other hijackings.” [9/11 Commission, 11/20/2003 ; 9/11 Commission, 1/27/2004]
Caller Claims His Wife’s Plane Has Been Hijacked – A specific incident he will describe involves a man who claims to be the husband of a flight attendant on a United Airlines aircraft calling the airline and saying his wife’s plane has been hijacked. The man says, “My wife just called me, she’s a flight attendant,” and provides the number of her flight. He says her plane is a Boeing 767 coming in from Europe and the crew has been killed. After making inquiries, the airline determines that the report is inaccurate. The caller “was a crank,” Studdert will comment. [9/11 Commission, 11/20/2003 ; Center for Values-Driven Leadership, 4/23/2012]
Explosions Are Reported at Two Airports – Rich Miles, the SOC manager, starts receiving reports over the phone of incidents that have not actually occurred after Flight 175 crashes into the World Trade Center, at 9:03 a.m. (see 9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001). These alleged incidents include explosions at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, and La Guardia Airport in New York, and a Boeing 757 supposedly crashing in Crystal City, Virginia. [9/11 Commission, 11/21/2003 ]
Flight Attendant Remains Quiet after Calling the Airline – Rono Dutta, the president of United Airlines, who is at the company’s headquarters this morning, will describe two particular incidents. One of them involves a flight attendant on the airline’s San Francisco to Paris flight phoning ground control but then remaining quiet when the call is answered. This causes Dutta and his colleagues to incorrectly assume her flight has been hijacked. The other incident involves a United Airlines flight landing in Kansas but then taking off again, even though all airborne aircraft have been ordered to land at the nearest airport (see (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001). “We thought the terrorists had control over it,” Dutta will comment. [Business Standard, 6/14/2013]
Some Incidents May Be ‘Intentional Hoaxes’ – United Airlines continues looking into the rumors of incidents it receives to determine if they are correct until all of its planes are on the ground. [9/11 Commission, 11/20/2003 ] Miles will recall that while much of the information that is reported to him turns out to be false, “he kept taking the calls, assuming the reports may have been true.” [9/11 Commission, 11/21/2003 ] Studdert will say he believes some of the false reports are “intentional hoaxes.” [9/11 Commission, 11/20/2003 ] All the same, he will say, “the presumed threats cannot be dismissed in the high uncertainty of the moment.” [9/11 Commission, 1/27/2004] Two of the flights hijacked in today’s terrorist attacks—Flight 175 and Flight 93—are United Airlines aircraft. [CNN, 9/12/2001] In addition to this and to receiving the numerous false reports, United Airlines temporarily loses communication with several of its planes this morning (see (10:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001); numerous other United Airlines aircraft are temporarily reported as missing (see 10:47 a.m.-11:40 a.m. September 11, 2001 and 10:55 a.m.-11:15 a.m. September 11, 2001); and one United Airlines plane reportedly transmits a distress signal while flying over the Atlantic Ocean (see 11:18 a.m.-12:27 p.m. September 11, 2001). [Federal Aviation Administration, 9/11/2001; Federal Aviation Administration, 9/11/2001; Federal Aviation Administration, 3/21/2002, pp. S-26; 9/11 Commission, 1/27/2004]