The NY Times has just published the recordings from the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.), North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) and American Airlines from the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Though some of the recordings have been previously published online, this transcript with accompanying recordings is carefully put together in the order in which they were recorded, from the loss of contact with Flight 11 to the reports of it crashing into the Pentagon. They paint a chilling picture of the hijackings as they took place on 9/11 from the perspective of those working in flight towers as well as control centers. From an emergency dispatching perspective, they are horrific in their description of helplessness to take any action.
Although all of the recordings have extremely professional persons from the FAA and NORAD attempting to work together, it is obvious that there was no fast mobilization of response system set up for dealing with multiple hijackings on civilian aircraft. The level of action was hindered by multiple persons answering radio transmissions, confusion as to who would be responsible for taking action, and lack of information.
The earliest and most telling recording was the early witnessing of a hijacking on Flight 11 out of Boston, made by a stewardess from a jump seat telephone/radio. It was misfortunate that her information was not relayed to appropriate authorities faster, because she gave very precise information as to what was going on and who she was. It is clear that if this information had been relayed quicker to NORAD, Flight 11 might have been intercepted before it hit the Pentagon. Confusion in orders for scrambled aircraft was also evident, with pilots waiting for confirmation as to whether or not they had the authorization to shoot down non-responsive aircraft.
John Farmer, dean of Rutgers Law School and his students carefully transcribed the transmissions after Miles Kara tracked them down in the National Archives. Mr. Kara and The 9/11 Commission should be praised for their unflinching push to get these recordings out to the public, and for posterity. For more information and the link to the recordings and transcripts online, please see the links below.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/nyregion/911-tapes.html