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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, the Boeing 757-223, N644AA, was hijacked as part of the 9/11 attacks. 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 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.

The flight was probably hijacked between 8:51 to 8:54. 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.

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. 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. One hundred twenty-five people in the Pentagon died from the attack.

The main impact zone of the crash was approximately 19 metres (57 feet) in width. Little wreckage was found from the airliner within this impact zone or inside the building. Most of the plane was destroyed in the massive explosion and subsequent fire. (A similar intense heat caused the collapse of both towers of the World Trade Center.) The upper floors of the damaged area of the Pentagon also collapsed, causing the burial of those smaller pieces still inside the Pentagon, some until days later. However, the County Fire Chief found smaller pieces of the airliner as quickly 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 a much smaller building, 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. Within the main impact zone was a hole that the object punched in the building, approximately 9 metres (27 feet) in width. The Pentagon is composed of five concentric rings. Thanks 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. At the end of the third ring was a circular 'punch out' hole, again 9 metres (27 feet) in diameter. The wingspan of a Boeing 757 is 38 metres (114 feet). These wings were broken off and pushed into the fuselage, where they were destroyed in the explosion, fire and collapse, although blackened sections of the building, visible in photographs, seem 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.

Among 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 Cotton, 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.

Disputes about the final destination of Flight 77

• Some dispute the claim that Flight 77 struck the Pentagon. Claims that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757 have been raised based on photographs taken from hundreds of feet away in which there is a seeming lack of debris and a lack of damage to the building or the lawn. Those who believe that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757 allege that no pieces of a commercial aircraft were found, that the footage was confiscated, and other factors.. However, many other 9/11 researchers agree that Flight 77 did indeed hit the Pentagon.,,.

• These theories conflict with over 100 eyewitness testimonies which describe a commercial jet impacting the building. No witness ever reports seeing a missile and only 2 witnesses located far from the scene thought the plane was a smaller plane.

• The newspaper the San Francisco Gate incorrectly stated in a column on April 19, 2006 that specific images of a plane crashing into the Pentagon had been made public. Those specific images had not been made public, and the Gate issued a retraction here. The Gate did not retract the essence of its story - that the conspiracy theories are inaccurate and implausible. Also, while no images exist of the moment immediately before and immediately during the time the plane hit the Pentagon, evidence exists and has been released that indicate it was a plane which hit the Pentagon, including images of plane parts in the wreckage.

• The Judicial Watch group in Washington, D.C. has filed suit against the Department of Defense for withholding a video which the DOD purports to show the moment of impact. The Judicial Watch press release is here . Note that Judicial Watch does not deny the existence of the tape, nor does it deny the fact that American Airlines 77 flew into the Pentagon. In fact, Judicial Watch, in its own press release's words, "seeks the information in part to help put to rest conspiracy theories that a government drone or missile hit the Pentagon rather than the hijacked United airplane." (Emphasis added.)

Discrepancies in official accounts

• Following September 11, Salem al-Hazmi was found alive and well in Saudi Arabia. He claims to have never visited the United States.
• Khalid al-Mihdhar is also reportedly still alive.
• Official accounts of in-flight calls made by the passengers to their loved ones describing the hijacking are of undetermined veracity. Evidence does not support the ability to make a successful cellphone call from a moving airplane above 30,000 ft without additional transmitting equipment .

External links

• Flight manifest for American Airlines flight 77
• Memorial wiki tribute to those killed in this flight (with flight manifest)
• CooperativeResearch.org - 'Project: Complete 911 Timeline' (Open-Content project)
• GPOAccess.gov - 'The 9-11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Official Government Edition' 2005)
• - Urban Legends Reference Pages debunking of Flight 77 conspiracy theories.

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