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Template:Sep11 American Airlines Flight 77 was a morning flight that routinely flew from Washington Dulles International Airport in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles International Airport (IAD-LAX). On September 11, 2001, while being piloted by Charles Burlingame, the Boeing 757-223, N644AA, was hijacked as part of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Hijacking

The flight was scheduled to depart at 8:10 AM EDT, but actually departed at 8:20. It was later determined that three of the hijackers had been stopped before boarding the flight because they failed the metal detector test, but were nonetheless allowed to enter the plane.

It has been estimated that the flight was probably hijacked between 8:51 and 8:54. The hijackers were reported to have been Khalid al-Mihdhar, Majed Moqed, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salem al-Hazmi, and the suicide pilot Hani Hanjour. The assailants used knives and box-cutters to gain entrance to the cockpit. By 8:56, the flight was turned around, and the transponder had been disabled. The FAA was aware at this point that there was an emergency aboard the plane. (By this time, American Airlines Flight 11 had already crashed into the World Trade Center, and United Airlines flight 175 was known to have been hijacked as well.)

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, two passengers made phone calls to contacts on the ground. At 9:12, passenger Renee May was reported to have called her mother, Nancy May, in Las Vegas. She said her flight was being hijacked by six individuals and they had been moved to the rear of the plane. Barbara K. Olson, another passenger, called her husband, United States Solicitor General Theodore Olson at the Justice Department twice to tell him about the hijacking and to report that the passengers and pilots were held in the back of the plane. After the call was cut off, Theodore Olson tried unsuccessfully to contact Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Crash

Flight 77 crashed into the western side of The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C. at 9:37 AM EDT, killing all of its 58 passengers (including the hijackers) and 6 crew. As the airplane hurtled towards the Pentagon at 400 miles per hour , it clipped several street lampposts (one of which fell onto a taxi cab, injuring the driver see photo ) as it was about 20 feet off the ground . Its right wing hit a portable generator that provided backup power for the Pentagon, and the left engine hit an external steam vault, before it slammed into the Pentagon. The section of the Pentagon hit consisted mainly of recently renovated, unoccupied offices, and was damaged by the crash and the ensuing violent fire. The crash and subsequent fire penetrated three outer ring sections of the western side. The outermost ring section was largely destroyed, and a large section collapsed. 125 people in the Pentagon died from the attack.

About 19 minutes after impact, upper floors of the damaged area of the Pentagon collapsed. Although most of the plane was destroyed in the massive explosion and subsequent fire, some wreckage was found from the airliner within the impact zone and inside the building. The collapse caused the burial of airliner wreckage inside the Pentagon, some until days later. However, the County Fire Chief found smaller pieces of the airliner as soon as a day after the crash. Pieces of fuselage were found some 30 metres (90 feet) away from the crash site. As opposed to the extremely tall World Trade Center, the Pentagon is merely five stories tall, and thus the flight was forced to dive low enough, according to multiple eyewitness accounts, to glance off the ground before hitting the Pentagon, which absorbed much of the impact of the crash. The Pentagon is composed of five concentric rings. Due to the thick limestone walls and the sturdiness of building materials being used in the renovations at the time, Flight 77 fully penetrated only the outer three rings, although it caused damage to all five rings. The wings were broken off and pushed into the fuselage, where they were destroyed in the explosion, fire and collapse, although blackening of sections of the building, visible in photographs, seems to have been caused by the burning wings.

After the crash, the flight route designation for future flights on the same route was renumbered Flight 149.

Security camera video

On May 16, 2006, the Department of Defense released filmed footage that were recorded by security cameras of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon. The images were made public in response to a December 2004 Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch. Some still images from the video had previously been released and publicly circulated, but this was the first official release of the full video of the crash.

Victims

Aboard American Airlines Flight 77 were three eleven-year-old schoolchildren, embarking on an educational trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, California, as part of a program funded by the National Geographic Society. The students' names were Bernard Brown, Asia Cottom, and Rodney Dickens. Their chaperones; Sarah Clark, 65; James Debeuneure, 58; Ann Judge, 45; Hilda Taylor and Joe Ferguson also died. In total, five passengers were under 12 years old.

Memorial

A memorial is being constructed at The Pentagon in memory of those who lost their lives at The Pentagon and on American Airlines Flight 77.

Conspiracy theories about the final destination of Flight 77

In spite of conclusive evidence to the contrary, some dispute the claim that Flight 77 struck the Pentagon. Claims that the Pentagon was hit by something significantly smaller than a boeing 757 (most commonly a missile) have been raised based on photographs (e.g. above) in which there is a lack of debris or pieces of a commercial aircraft within the immediate impact area, and a lack of damage to the building or the lawn, often in the context of larger conspiracy theories of US government culpability. The international group of academics "Scholars for 9/11 Truth", assert in an Unofficial Physical Analysis that no physical mechanism is known by which the impact of a 100 tonne, 114 foot wide, 44 foot high Boeing 757 could have caused the observed damage to the building (such as the 54 foot wide impact zone or 27 foot diameter exit hole). Those who believe that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757 point to security camera footage from a nearby Citgo gas station and from the Virginia Department of Transportation that were confiscated by the federal government, aswell as dramatic contradictions between the accounts of different witnesses of the attack. The security camera footage has also been requested as part of Judicial Watch's FOIA request. , in addition to the video footage released by the Department of Defense on May 16, 2006.

References

1. Arlington County, Virginia (2002, July 23). "Arlington County After-Action Report on the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon" (PDF). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. "Lloyd, Survivors' Fund Project Survivor Story". SurvivorsFundProject.org.
3. "Lloyd, Capitol Cab (546-2400)". stevenwarran.blogspot.com.
4. "Some Eyewitness Accounts: Flight 77 Crash at the Pentagon, Sept. 11, 2001". About.com.
5. NIST (January 2003). The Pentagon Building Performance Report (PDF). NIST.
6. "Pentagon Memorial Web Site".
7. "Official Press release at the United States Department of Defense".
8. "FOIA request" (PDF). Judicial Watch.

External links

• Flight manifest for American Airlines flight 77
• Memorial wiki tribute to those killed in this flight (with flight manifest)
• Joint Staff FOIA Requester Service Center- Pentagon site for two videos released by same on 16 May 2006
• GPOAccess.gov - 'The 9-11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Official Government Edition' 2005)
• Full series of images
• Video Summary of Conspiracy Theories

• History of Virginia
• September 11, 2001 attacks
• Accidents and incidents on commercial airliners in the United States