 | |
| Hijacking | |
|---|---|
| Date | September 11, 2001 |
| Summary | Terrorist suicide hijacking |
| Site | North Tower (WTC 1) of the World Trade Center, New York City, U.S. 40°42′44.5″N 74°00′46.9″W / 40.712361°N 74.013028°W |
| Total fatalities | c. 1,700[a] (2,763 combined with UA 175) |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 767-223ER[b] |
| Operator | American Airlines |
| IATA flight No. | AA11 |
| ICAO flight No. | AAL11 |
| Call sign | AMERICAN 11 |
| Registration | N334AA |
| Flight origin | Logan International Airport |
| Destination | Los Angeles International Airport |
| Occupants | 92 (including 5 hijackers) |
| Passengers | 81 (including 5 hijackers) |
| Crew | 11 |
| Fatalities | 92 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Ground casualties | |
| Ground fatalities | c. 1,600 in or near the North Tower of the World Trade Center |
American Airlines Flight 11 was a domestic passenger flight that was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on the morning of September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. The hijacked airliner was deliberately crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, killing everyone still alive aboard the flight and resulting in the deaths of more than one thousand[c] people in the top 18 stories of the skyscraper in addition to causing the demise of numerous others below the trapped floors, making it not only the deadliest of the four suicide attacks executed that morning in terms of both plane and ground fatalities, but also the single deadliest act of terrorism in human history[d] and the deadliest plane crash of all time.[e] The aircraft involved, a Boeing 767-200ER with 92 passengers and crew, was flying American Airlines' daily scheduled morning transcontinental service from Boston Logan International Airport in Massachusetts to Los Angeles International Airport in California.
The airplane left the runway at 07:59. Not more than 15 minutes after takeoff, the hijackers injured two people, murdered one, and breached the cockpit while forcing the passengers and crew to the rear of the aircraft against their will. The assailants quickly overpowered both the captain and the first officer and possibly killed them, allowing lead hijacker Mohamed Atta to take over the controls, having intensively trained as a pilot in the lead-up to the attacks. Air traffic controllers suspected that the flight was in distress because the crew were no longer responding. They realized the plane had been hijacked when Atta's falsely reassuring announcements for the hostages were transmitted to air traffic control instead of the cabin's PA system as intended. Two flight attendants were able to contact American Airlines and passed along information relevant to the situation, in particular casualties suffered by the passengers and crew.
Atta flew the plane into the tower's north face from floors 93 through 99 at 08:46 local time. The impact was witnessed by countless people in the streets of New York City as well as the nearby state of New Jersey, but few video recordings captured the moment. Jules Naudet captured the only known footage clearly depicting Flight 11's impact. The media quickly began reporting on the incident and speculated that the crash had been an accident. Seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the World Trade Center's South Tower at 09:03, instantly dispelling any notion it was accidental.
The damage caused by the plane and the fires ignited by its crash caused the North Tower to collapse at 10:28 that morning, resulting in hundreds of additional casualties. While the recovery effort at the World Trade Center site did lead to the discovery and identification of body fragments from certain individuals who boarded Flight 11, many have not been identified.
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- ^ "TWO YEARS LATER: THE 91ST FLOOR; The Line Between Life and Death, Still Indelible". The New York Times. September 10, 2003. Archived from the original on December 5, 2022. Retrieved November 22, 2022.
- ^ National Institute of Standards and Technology (2005). Final Reports from the NIST World Trade Center Disaster Investigation (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on July 7, 2021. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
- ^ "1095 soldiers still missing since the Speicher massacre by ISIS". CNN Arabic (in Arabic). September 18, 2014. Archived from the original on September 20, 2014. Retrieved May 15, 2023.