Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

Korean Air Flight Had Close Call on 9/11

Aired August 13, 2002 - 14:21   ET

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

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: We have got some new revelations today about what happened in cockpits and air traffic control towers on September 11. Sources say just hours after the attacks, a miscommunication nearly led to the downing of a Korean Air flight, and for a tense 90 minutes, air traffic controllers believed the flight had been hijacked.
CNN's Patty Davis joins us from Washington with more on this dramatic story -- Patty.

PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was September 11 and everyone was jumpy about the hijackings that had just occurred a few hours earlier. Korean Air Flight 85 was headed to Anchorage, Alaska for refueling when it sent out over its transponder the emergency code for a hijacking in progress. It also had used the letters "H-J-K," which stand for hijacking, in transmission to Korean Air operations. Worried that the plane was in hostile hands, the North American defense command, or NORAD, scrambled military jets to investigate and shoot the plane down if necessary.

The jets intercepted the 747 with nearly 200 passengers on board. Meanwhile, on the ground, Alaska's governor ordered evacuations of state buildings and the Valdez pipeline terminal. The military jets from NORAD made visual contact with the pilots in the Korean airliner who cooperated as it was escorted to an airport in Whitehorse, Canada.

As a precaution, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police boarded the plane with guns drawn. Now, Korean Air says it was all a big misunderstanding. The pilots did what they were told to do by air traffic control, that that transponder was mistakenly set to that hijack code. There was never any threat on board.

The FAA, meanwhile, says that there was confusion on the part of the pilot on that Korean airliner about what air traffic control told them to do, that air traffic did not ask the pilot to squawk that hijack code at any time.

A spokesman for Alaska's governor says that no one was going to take anything lightly like that, that day. It just goes to show you, he said, that we were all terrorized by what was going on back East -- Carol.

LIN: Patty, I just wanted to clarify something. This hijacked signal -- so was it just a coincidence that it was accidentally triggered?

DAVIS: Well, it appears that they physically turn that signal, they squawked the hijack code over their transponder. But Korean Air is saying it was really a misunderstanding with air traffic control. The pilot somehow had some misunderstanding, or air traffic control, they say, had a misunderstanding about that.

Now, air traffic control from the FAA, meanwhile, is saying that, no, it was the pilot who had the misunderstanding. So there's some -- there's some contradiction among those two.

LIN: My, what a close call, though.

DAVIS: But, everybody is saying that this shows, in fact, that it worked. That they realized that there was not really a threat in the sky. This plane didn't get shot down, and the system worked that day -- Carol.

LIN: Good reporting there. Thank you very much. Patty Davis, live from Washington.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com