World Trade Center

An American Airlines Boeing 767 (Flight 11) left Boston’s Logan Airport at 7:59 EDT heading for Los Angeles. Mohamed Atta (who had flown to Boston from Portland, Maine early on 9/11 and whose suitcase, containing a video on flying airplanes, a fuel consumption calculator, "last instructions" [this is the English translation], and a copy of the Koran was later found in a rental car at Logan Airport) was on board. So were four other hijackers.

When Atta and his compatriots took control of Flight 11, they diverted the plane south toward New York City. Betty Ong, the “number 3" attendant on Flight 11, was able to reach someone on the ground to report what was happening in the plane.

Air traffic controllers could hear part of the conversation in the cockpit after the hijackers took control. (A quick-thinking member of the flight crew had managed to activate that system.)

At 8:28 EDT, one of the attackers said:

Don’t do anything foolish. You are not going to get hurt. We have more planes. We have other planes.

Flight 11 struck the North Tower between the 95th and 103rd floors at 8:46:40 EDT. (Jules Naudet shot the video of the plane striking the tower.) All 92 people onboard died, including nine flight attendants and both pilots.

One of the “other planes” was already on its suicide-murder mission.