Reply #75: The call from Sweeney came 20 minutes after [View All]

[DoYouEverWonder]

the plane left Logan. She was able to talk to the ground for 25 minutes according to the report in the following link. Ong was the other stewardess on the plane whose call is the one that was recorded. Apparently, Sweeney's call was not recorded so only Ong's call would have a transcript. There are only verbal reports from the people you spoke to Sweeney because her calls supposedly were not recorded.

However, my point is that none of this is new news. Ong and Sweeney's call were widely reported at the time and the transcripts only confirm the information that was already reported.


Here is the report from ABC with more of the original story:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/primetime/DailyNews/primetime_flightattendants_020718.html">ABC News

"Listen, and listen to me very carefully. I'm on Flight 11. The airplane has been hijacked," said the voice on the other end. The caller was Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant on board American Airlines Flight 11, which had just been hijacked on its way from Boston to Los Angeles.

Over the next 25 minutes, Sweeney, a 13-year veteran with the airline, calmly relayed information to Woodward that would later be crucial in helping the FBI identify the men who hijacked the plane and flew it into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

<snip>

Ong's call came through to Vanessa Minter, an agent at the airline's reservation center in Raleigh, N.C. Minter conferenced in Nydia Gonzales, whose responsibilities include dealing with security issues.

Ong told the two women the hijackers had sprayed something in the first-class cabin to keep people out of the front of the plane. The two women could hear that other flight attendants were going back and forth in the coach section to relay information to Ong. "There was total teamwork," said Gonzales. Ong said the hijackers had not made any demands.

The first four minutes of Ong's call were recorded, but the FBI has not released the tape to the public. Sweeney's phone call was not recorded, but Woodward took notes that would later become crucial to the FBI's investigation. Without Sweeney's calm reporting, the plane might have crashed with no one certain the man in charge was tied to al Qaeda.