12/28/2023 0 Comments Hijacker jack girlGonzalez addressed the operations center clearly and briskly, but would then soften her voice and ask Ong, "What's going on now, honey?" The emergency center was unable to hear Ong through the noise of the aircraft. Ong's voice is absent from the second part of the tape as Gonzalez conveys information between the emergency center and Ong. She was also the first person to alert authorities to who the hijackers were, saying she believed there were three or four hijackers and giving authorities the men's seat numbers. Ong reported to Gonzalez that they had moved all the passengers out of First and Business classes, but that many passengers in the rear of the plane didn't know what was going on. In a staff report to committee members, investigators said it was because of Ong's call that they learned about the Mace, which they said they also discovered among the belongings left in the suitcase of hijacker Mohammed Atta, who piloted Ong's plane. ![]() Commission investigators praised Gonzalez and Ong yesterday for relaying as much information as they did, largely by way of a three-party conversation with the American Airlines emergency operations center in Dallas, with Gonzalez acting as an intermediary. "Ībout a minute later the man's boss, Nydia Gonzalez, takes over the phone call. Our First Class gal and our purser has been stabbed. Can you hold on for one second? Somebody's coming back. The cockpit is not answering their phone. He pauses and then asks, "What is your name?" The cockpit is not answering the phone," Ong says urgently.Īfter a pause, Ong says, "I'm in my jump seat right now."Īt that point the man seems to realize she is a flight attendant but still does not address what Ong has told him. We're bound "for Boston, we're up in the air. "What seat are you in?" the man asks, and then again forcefully, "Ma'am, what seat are you in?" "Yes," Ong says, who was having trouble hearing the man. The man replies, "What seat are you in?" apparently unaware that Ong is a flight attendant. "Somebody's been stabbed in Business Class, and, um, I think there's Mace and we can't breathe and I don't know, I think we're getting hijacked." "The cockpit's not answering the phone," Ong tells the man. The tape recording picks up mid-sentence after an unidentified - and somewhat impatient - reservations specialist had answered the phone. On Ong's flight, the hijackers appeared to have killed at least one passenger - and possibly two - before taking over the aircraft. The report said the flight data recorder found buried in the rubble of the Pentagon indicated the pilot "had input autopilot instructions for a route to Reagan National Airport." Investigators believe the hijackers might have also used the autopilot and the Global Positioning System to target the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. While her conversation was the most dramatic new revelation at the hearing, commission investigators also released a nine-page report yesterday that said the hijackers probably sprayed Mace around the cockpit area on all four flights, apparently to keep passengers away, and that they convinced passengers to sit quietly on at least one of the flights by announcing over the intercom that there was a bomb on board. It lasted until her plane flew with explosive force into a Trade Center tower. The tape of her call offered some of the first insight and an all-too-real account of what was happening aboard the four hijacked airplanes that morning. ![]() Ong's voice, captured on tape, broke only when the aircraft would suddenly plunge at the hands of inexperienced pilots who had taken over the cockpit. 11, 2001, attacks.įor the first time, panel members had nothing to say. There had been two days of official testimony from more than two dozen government administrators, aviation security experts and law enforcement personnel to the commission investigating the Sept. We can't get inside the cockpit," Ong told an American reservations specialist in a call from the rear phone aboard doomed American Airlines Flight 11. Our First Class gal's stabbed, our purser has been stabbed. WASHINGTON - The tape of Betty Ong's voice yesterday, alive and urgent yet amazingly calm, describing through the background buzz how a group of hijackers had stabbed two of her fellow flight attendants and taken over the first plane that slammed into the World Trade Center, silenced the congressional hearing room.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |