Senior United Airlines personnel are, unusually, not informed about air traffic control communications with Flight 175. At 8:41 a.m., the pilots of Flight 175 reported to air traffic controllers that they heard “a suspicious transmission” from another aircraft during their departure out of Boston (see 8:41 a.m.-8:42 a.m. September 11, 2001). Yet the details of this communication with Flight 175 are not passed on to personnel at the United Airlines System Operations Control (SOC) center, just outside Chicago. [9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 20]
Manager Receives ‘No Relevant Information about the Hijackings’ – Rich Miles, the manager on duty at the SOC, will later tell the 9/11 Commission that “[w]hile his experience and expectation was that [FAA air traffic control] would communicate to him and to the SOC about ‘strange’ or unusual communications from the cockpit… he could not recall any such communications on 9/11.” He will say that although, “typically, he would receive relevant information from the [air traffic control] system,” he receives “no relevant information about the hijackings” on this day. [9/11 Commission, 11/21/2003 ]
Other Airline Personnel Unaware of Flight 175 Communications – None of the other senior United Airlines officials on duty at the SOC are told about the 8:41 a.m. report made by the pilots of Flight 175. [9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 20] These officials will tell the 9/11 Commission that “the dispatchers and managers at the SOC” are in fact “not aware of any communications” between FAA controllers and Flight 175 this morning. [9/11 Commission, 11/20/2003 ] The 9/11 Commission will describe, “SOC personnel at United that we talked to had no idea of the extent of interaction of the [Flight 175] crew with the saga of [Flight 11].” The Commission will add, “We walked down a list of indicators,” but state, “Until we mentioned them, no one we talked to [at United Airlines] was aware of those occurrences.” [9/11 Commission, 11/17/2003
]
Controllers Communicate with Pilots, Not Dispatchers – The United Airlines officials will say, however, that, “first and foremost,” FAA controllers “communicated directly with airline pilots, not the dispatchers” at the airline. [9/11 Commission, 11/20/2003 ] Ed Ballinger, the United Airlines dispatcher responsible for Flight 175, will comment that “he did not feel that [air traffic control] was under any obligation to share such information [as the details of the 8:41 a.m. communication] with him, because it didn’t apparently affect the safety of any of his flights.” [9/11 Commission, 4/14/2003
]
Airline Not Advised to Notify Other Planes about Hijackings – The United Airlines officials who talk with the 9/11 Commission will also recall that “they never received any communication… from the FAA or the air traffic control system advising United to contact its aircraft about the hijackings.” The 9/11 Commission will not offer any explanation for the lack of communication between air traffic control and United Airlines. [9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 20]