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CNN Live Today

Air Traffic Controllers Talk About 9/11

Aired August 12, 2002 - 13:19   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: In New York today, air traffic controllers are talking about what happened on September 11 in the airport towers across the nation.
Miles O'Brien is there, and he joins us with the latest from the air traffic controllers -- Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, we're in Westbury, New York, on Long Island, and this is facility behind me -- this is the radar facility which controls a 100-mile disk of airspace around the New York airports. The folks here, obviously, very instrumental in watching, anticipating, trying to respond to the 9/11 attacks.

They told us quite a tale today. Not a lot of tremendously new information, but a lot of really interesting details on what it was like to be in those control rooms, in those radar rooms, watching those blips on the screens, trying to figure out what was going on.

Hindsight is 20/20. In retrospect, obviously, it's easy to piece it all together and see what was happen. But at the time that the first sign of trouble began, 8:39 Eastern time in the morning, it was really viewed to be just a plain old hijack, if you will, if you could call it that: a routine hijack.

They drilled for this many times here in training centers like this, trying to figure out how to respond. And the basic assumption was the plane would land, demands would be made, and the passengers ultimately would be used as a pawn. It was an entirely different scenario, of course which played out. And the air traffic controllers here gave us a sense of how they tried to discern, how they tried to track an aircraft after its transponder, American Airlines Flight 11 -- after its transponder was turned off.

That transponder, essentially, lights up an airplane like a Christmas tree on a radar screen. Without it, it's very difficult to track that aircraft.

Frank Hatfield is one of the senior air traffic controllers here. He gave us a sense of what it was like trying to piece it all together and follow those four airplanes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANK HATFIELD, FAA AIR TRAFFIC DIVISION MANAGER: At that second in time, there were 4,546 airplanes in the air traffic control system that we were talking to. There were approximately another 1,000 to 2,000 aircraft in the system that we were not talking to, that were flying perfectly legal. So there were about 6,000 airplanes out there. The air traffic controllers in the eastern region, out of 6,000 airlines, were able to identify four aircraft whose sole mission in life was to avoid detection: flying low, flying fast, shutting off electronic means of communication.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the equivalent of finding four needles in a haystack.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: And as you look back at time line which they've laid out for us, you get a sense of how quickly things were happening. The time between the transponder being turned off on American Airlines Flight 11 and the time it hit tower, less than 10 minutes. And really it took air traffic controllers turning on CNN -- for which they thanked us today -- turning on CNN, watching it, and realizing immediately this was not a normal hijacking -- this was an attack.

And from that point on, all their decisions were different. And their assumptions were different. It ultimately lead to an unprecedented decision to take every single aircraft, those 4,600 you just heard about, out of the sky, land them immediately. By a little after noon on September 11, that happened. Planes did not take off for another three days, as you'll recall.

It's a harrowing tale. These people in these buildings here that do this job are used to stress. You've heard about air traffic controllers and stress. The amount of stress that they dealt with that day is hard to imagine.

And ever since, Carol, they've had to realize that those little blips on the screens, in addition to keeping them apart, each one of those could ultimately be nothing more than a guided missile.

LIN: What a way to think of it. But certainly, September 11 changed a lot for all of us. And you're absolutely right. I don't think any of us could believe it unless we were watching it, on our air live.

Thank you very much, Miles O'Brien -- a live report there, out of New York.

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