American Airlines flight 11, bound from
Logan Airport in
Boston to
Los Angeles International Airport, crashed into the
World Trade Center's North Tower at 8:45 AM
Eastern time on
September 11, 2001, killing all 92 people on board and causing the North Tower to collapse, which killed upwards of a thousand people on the ground. It was the first of four aircraft to crash on September 11th.
The aircraft was registration N334AA, a Boeing 767-200ER delivered to American in 1987. It was the 169th 767 built by Boeing.
At 7:59 AM Eastern, flight 11 took off from Logan without incident. During its climb, its transponder was shut down, and it disappeared from the screens of air traffic controllers. At 8:24, a United Airlines captain reported hearing a "suspicious transmission" that sounded like a person saying "Stay in your seats": that acute listener was the captain of United Airlines flight 175, which went down shortly after Flight 11 and took out the South Tower.
Flight 11 impacted at 350 knots between the 80th and 90th floors of the North Tower, and its jet fuel was set aflame. Although the WTC had been built to withstand an aircraft impact, widebody aircraft like the 767 didn't exist at the time it was designed, and so the fire caused the North Tower to collapse one hour and forty-four minutes after the initial impact, at 10:29 AM.
The flight crew of Flight 11 were Captain John Ogonowski, of Dracut, MA, and First Officer Thomas McGuinness, of Portsmouth, NH: nine flight attendants and 81 passengers were on board. Among them were David Angell, executive producer of "Frasier", Daniel Lewin, co-founder of Akamai, and six executives of TJ Maxx on a business trip. Also on board were five agents of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network, who were deemed responsible for the hijacking and kamikaze attack: they were Satam al-Suqami, Waleed al-Shehri, Wail al-Shehri, Mohamed Atta, and Abdulaziz al-Omari.
source: www.airdisaster.com, www.inmemoriamonline.net