In Honor & Memory... We Hear an NYC Air Traffic Controller’s 9/11 Story: How Chris Tucker Saved Lives

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28:15So you go through the three months training. You're not filtered out. You're in the 40 % that make it. You move to New York, and now you're kind of like apprenticing. Exactly. You become a trainee. It took me three and a half years to become fully certified where I was allowed to sit by myself without somebody plugged in with me and talk to airplanes alone. And the very first day was terrifying. Really? Because all the lives of all these people are literally at your fingertips. It's interesting. You know, in the very beginning, when you first learn how to do it, the job is stressful for that reason, because you're responsible for other people's safety.

28:52Once you become relatively competent, because it takes a while to become competent on your own, really it takes a solid three years before you can become a really decent controller. because there's just so many experiences you have to see and things, situations you have to see and learn from. It's a complicated business. But after you become relatively competent, you know, people walk up to you on the street and they say, oh, you're an air traffic controller. And the first thing out of their mouth is that's a very stressful job. And to a certain extent, that's true. The job can be stressful, but not because we're responsible for other people's lives.

29:26The stress comes from the fact that when you get busy, you have a large number of decisions to make and they, they stack up in like a queue in your brain and your brain can only hold five or six of them and keep them straight. If you have seven or eight or nine or 10 things that have to be done, that produces a tremendous amount of stress. Right. So, so what's, what's the size of the, of the problem here? Like, are you dealing with, like at any given point in the metropolitan area, how many planes are in the air, both public and private? So I've heard this statistic, so I cannot account for its veracity, but I've heard that if you were to take a point that's kind of equidistant from Newark airport to LaGuardia to Kennedy, you take that point, you draw a circle 10 miles in radius, so 20 mile diameter circle around that point, right?

30:22In that column of airspace, at any given time, there can be 300 aircraft. And very few of them are in level flight. They're all climbing, descending, changing altitudes, turning. And they're going hundreds of miles. And some of them are passing over. Correct. There's all sorts of things happening. And then, and again, I'm sorry for the naive questions, but I'm hoping it sets the setting for the 9-11 story. a lot of these planes have their routes planned in advance. That's correct. There are highways in the sky, just like there are on the surface for cars. Aircraft fly mostly on highways in the sky.

30:58So like Boston to New York, those planes take off every half hour, but they're flying on that same highway. And as long as you see them keeping that spacing, you don't have to think, the decisions are relatively easy, I imagine, on that specific route. If you're talking about a single route of flight that's heavily populated, yes. And so if you're talking about a single airway, then you get busy using speed control. American 646, say airspeed, 300 knots. Roger, maintain 300 knots or graders. Delta 656, say your airspeed, 310. Roger, reduce speed to 300 knots or less. Because you're seeing them on the radar or whatever.

31:33And is it radar? It is radar, yeah. So you're seeing them on the radar and you see that they're, okay, they're at a good distance. They're both traveling the same speed, so they're not going to hit each other. this one's going to start to descend, but that's okay because this one's still far enough away, and boom, you can make a decision and whatever. You're descending, you have a... Right. You go into the routine in your brain, okay, this plane's descending, everything else is normal, now go to 250 miles an hour, go down 1 ,000, whatever. Do private jets, do they, or small planes, do they get in the way because they're not as regulated?

32:09It's not because, well, yes and no. So you have small planes that can be IFR, So they have to be under my control. And small planes don't mix well with jets, typically. So if you have a single engine or a twin engine prop on the same airway at an altitude that a jet wants, it poses a problem. You have to get the jet either around him or down below him or above him. That's a drag. Like one person flying a little plane and you got to tell some jet going to London, like, oh, move 5 ,000 feet higher and increase your speed. Yeah, and it's fascinating. It becomes an interesting problem. So that's one thing.

32:49Then you can have VFR aircraft that don't have to fly on the airway, so they can go wherever they want to, and they're required to maintain visual separation from other aircraft. If they get into busy airspace, it's incumbent upon them, I think, personally. This is my take on it. For their own safety, to talk to an air traffic controller. Because the air traffic controller has the big picture. We can see what's going on. We know where the threats are. long before they do.

33:18And when they pick up the phone or whatever it is, and they say, you know, hey, is there an air traffic controller out there? Who are they talking to? Like, how does that get routed to their... So it depends. And they can look on a chart to find out what frequencies are best to pick up, right? So if you're within a certain distance of New York City and you're on the southeast side, and you'll look at the chart, oh, 120.02, and I'll talk to New York approach. And what happens is you call a radar controller, whether he's in a center or an approach control, and you say, New York, this is Cessna 405.

33:50I'm one zero mile southeast of the Jones Beach Monument, northbound at 6 ,500 feet, looking for advisories. And the controller either radar identifies the aircraft. You know, he'll tell them to squawk a certain beacon code. Squawk means to, you know, he dials in a four-digit number. The aircraft broadcasts that number, and the radar can see it. and so now I know oh that's him right so I can put a make some keyword entries and attach the flight plan for that guy to that beacon code so now the radar knows who he is and it puts a full data block on the screen and I can see who this guy is and has have you ever had one of these small planes where suddenly the pilot is like so scared of flying like maybe it's raining and lightning and he's not used to this and you've had to kind of like say okay calm down here's what you do we're gonna we're gonna help you I have not personally encountered that but it happens on a regular basis where VFR pilots encounter IFR weather and it's a killer.

34:44It kills people throughout the year. Yeah. Yes. Um, it's a very dangerous situation for the, you know, mostly for the reasons we talked about before spatial disorientation. It always seems like such a cool thing. Oh, get a pilot's license. I am never going to get one. I don't need it. I don't, I, I, whatever. I mean, if you become confident in your own abilities, zero chance of that happening. Uh, so, okay. I've never been terrified in a plane. And that one time, that was the only time I really scared myself. There were other times when I had, I was involved in a near midair collision while I was talking to an air traffic controller at Republic Airport.

35:21And I was in the pattern at Republic Airport and another aircraft entered the pattern. And he said he was approaching from the west at the same altitude I was. So the moment he said his altitude, which was the altitude I was at, I started looking out the window immediately for this other aircraft. I didn't see him, but he said he was west of the field and I was east of the field. So basically, I'm no threat. But the controller kept saying, where are you? I don't see you. So once the controller fails to identify the aircraft's location, as a pilot, if I'm paying attention to the frequency and what's going on around me and what's going on in the frequency, I became concerned because she couldn't identify the aircraft.

35:56She didn't know where he was. So I was looking. I was on what's called the downwind, which is where you're parallel. I'm going to land on the runway here, and I'm opposite direction to the direction that I'm going to land, right? So I'm going to fly a rectangle. I'm going to go parallel to the runway, pass it a little bit. I'm going to make a right turn onto what's called the crosswind. Then I'm going to make another right turn onto what's called the final. So I'm looking over my shoulder to see where the center of the runway is because that's how you determine when you're going to pull power and start descending and apply flaps is your location when you're passing the runway opposite direction.

36:33So I'm looking over my shoulder at the runway. I decide it's time to start pulling the power. I look up and there's an aircraft right in front of me coming the other way. And at the same time I looked up, the controller said, Cessna 4-0 uniform, got if you have traffic at 12 o 'clock, a half mile opposite direction. And he was not half a mile away. He was a football field away. He was very, very scary close. And we were opposite direction. And I was probably doing 80 or 90 knots. I was in a Cessna 172 at the time. And he was probably doing the same. and I just pushed the yoke forward as far as it would go and turned it as far to the right as I could, which is dangerous as hell at low altitude.

37:09But I missed him, and I didn't put the aircraft into an incredibly unstable, you know, I didn't spin it or put it into a tremendous dive. I was able to get out of the way and recover right away. Did you fight him after you both landed? No, it just happens, you know. It's like air rage. Not at all. It didn't even occur to me to go talk to the guy. Okay. He just didn't, people get lost. It happens, you know, or they say the wrong word, you know, on west of the field. thinking, you're thinking the whole time I'm used to the field, but you say the word West. It just happens. So, I want to get to the 9-11 story.

37:39I have one more question. In 19, I guess, 81, Ronald Reagan fired 11 ,345 air traffic controllers when they had a union strike. Whether he was right or wrong, I have no idea. I only looked up this statistic right before I came over here. but I guess the feeling was he'll never do that because how will people take up take off and land if there's no air traffic controllers and if it takes three years as you say to train so why did he think he could do that and and why did we as a country survive that well it happened like I said I got hired in 88 and uh didn't start working as a controller as a trainee in New York center until January of 89.

38:29So it was long after I got there long after the strike. However, that having been said, the reason I got a job is because of the strike. They were still desperate for air traffic controllers eight years later, you know, so. But what did they do the day after? Well, the day, what they do, what they do typically in any situation where staffing is a problem, right, is they put tremendous restrictions on the space that is required between aircraft. So, So the New York center will say to New York approach control, I want 30 miles between all departures on the same airway, right? Or something. And they can be a little draconian, you know, and passengers on airplanes suffer from stuff like that whenever large restrictions get put in place.

39:09But did the economy suffer, you think, because maybe less people wanted to fly at that point? I wouldn't be shocked at all if that was the case. Because I guess there was a recession around then, but I didn't, you know, it was related to a whole bunch of things. I don't know how much this was a factor. That never occurred to me to think about it. That's a good question. So, okay, 9-11, you wake up, you go to work. It's the most beautiful day in the world. It was awesome. It was so beautiful. The sky was so blue, I couldn't believe it. Like I told you before, when I was walking into work, I stopped.

39:40And I spent several minutes just gawking at the sky because it was so crystalline and beautiful. It was like a special day. I remember thinking that too at like 7 a.m. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Yeah, and pilots and controllers refer to that as a cavu day, ceilings and visibility unlimited, which pilots love because they can see all kinds of stuff. And when you're working in a radar facility that covers areas around New York City, you constantly hear pilots saying, wow, the city looks gorgeous today, all the time. And that's what they were doing that morning. The city looks fantastic.

40:10It's really beautiful. So you want me to keep going? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I went into work. I sat down. I got to work sometime between 6.30 and 7 in the morning. And forgive me, it's been so long. I don't remember the timeline or what exactly time it was when things started to happen. I think 8.45 was the first hit. Oh, but your timeline started well before then. So in the vicinity of 8 o 'clock, things start happening. So I'm working, I'm sitting at a departure sector that works departures west and southwest out of New York. It's called the Yardley sector, sector 55. So west out of New York means like if something takes off from JFK, it's probably going to like Chicago or California or...

40:48That's northwest. So different areas. So if you're going to go out of Kennedy and you're going to go to... Yeah, Southern California, sometimes Northern California, depending on the day of the week and where the winds are. Yeah, you'll come out over... You'll leave Kennedy, head for Colts Neck, New Jersey, and then Robbinsville, New Jersey, which is kind of near Trenton. Those are the names of radio aids to navigation, actually. Colts Neck is a VOR. Robbinsville is a VOR. And then they head west from there. Oh, they don't just go straight west after they waste time? No, you can't come off the runway and just go, right?

41:19You have to have a very, the environment has to be very structured. The way departures go has to be very structured so that the arrival paths and the departure paths don't conflict with one another. I see. And so that all the departure paths from multiple airports don't conflict with one another. So like a plane takes off and like immediately gets out of the way, the plane's descending. Yeah. Yeah, so controllers, and that's stuff that we know by rote. Departure controllers know where to put the airplanes. They have gates that they have to put them through before they get to a certain departure fix.

41:50So the departure fix for Kennedy is called Robbinsville. And then LaGuardia and its satellite airport, which is White Plains, and Newark and its tremendous number of satellite airports use other departure fixes to go the same direction. So I have two southwestbound departure fixes out of Newark and LaGuardia, and a westbound departure fix out of Kennedy. And those two, those three routes all cross one another. Sorry, there's two southwest bounds that are parallel to one another, and they both cross the westbound Kennedys. So that's a little, you know, that adds a little complication to the mix right there.

42:25That makes the sector a little more complicated. Anytime you have crossing traffic, it's a little complicated, especially when some of it's climbing and some of it's descending. So on these southwest departure routes, I work departures out of New York. I also work arrivals into Baltimore and Washington National Airport, Ronald Reagan Airport, which pissed a lot of controllers off when they named the airport after Ronald Reagan. Oh, because he fired them. Exactly.

42:52So I was busy. I had a lot of arrivals into Washington and into Baltimore, and I had a lot of departures out of New York. And so a lot of vectoring, a lot of speed control. And I had a situation where I had two airplanes landing at Charlotte. North Carolina. And we had a restriction in place for Charlotte. We had to deliver 30 miles in trail to airplanes landing in Charlotte. So I had a guy who came from Boston Center who was level at 26 ,000 feet, ended up climbing a 28. And I had a departure out of New York who wanted to go into the mid-30s, also landing Charlotte. And he came out really just directly underneath this other airplane.

43:29So it was the U.S. Air behind a Delta. And the U.S. Air came out. And so now I have this one. So now I have a situation where I have two airplanes that are basically co-located and I have to put 30 miles between them. And it's a short sector. So I got a lot of work to do. Big vectors, big speed control. So I slow the departure down to 250 knots immediately and try to speed the guy up who's in level flight. And so while this is going on, because I slowed the back guy down, he begins to climb very rapidly. So they transfer their airspeed into vertical speed. Because all you have to do to slow a jet down is just pull the column back, point the nose up, you lose some speed, but you start gaining altitude rapidly.

44:14So the point was, is this guy climbed very rapidly. I got him far enough behind the delta that I could get him above the delta. But the ceiling of my airspace was 28 ,000 feet. So I needed permission from the controller who owned the airspace above me to climb the U.S. Air higher into that structure, into his airspace. So I happen to have an assistant sitting next to me. We call it a D-side or a handoff controller or an H-side. And I asked her, call 42, see if you can get higher for the U.S. Air. So she calls, and I hear her talking while I'm busy, and I'm talking to airplanes, and I hear her talking.

44:53I can't hear what the other controller is telling her. And she hangs up the phone, and she starts laughing, and she says, he says he's got a hijack over there. He can't take the point out. Point out is what we call it when we, you know, push another aircraft into another sector's airspace without giving them communications with the airplane. So she's laughing because she didn't believe him? Yeah, and it's because the guy who was sitting at that sector, sector 42, had a kind of a flair for the dramatic. But saying it was a plane hijacked, that seems like borderline illegal in such a professional capacity.

45:26Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, so, but she didn't believe him, you know, she didn't believe him. And I guess because also that day, I think a lot of people throughout the day were experienced going into denial. Exactly. And it's central, it's central to the whole thing. I mean, is that it was an experience that was just so far out of our realm of past experience that it was, it was not, it couldn't possibly happen. Right. So she said that was in this upper airspace that said come out of Boston? No, this is the LaGuardia or New York departure. I can't remember where he took off of. I want to say LaGuardia, but, um, it was us air 542.

46:03So he's climbing rapidly. And, and, uh, I had to level them off at 28 ,000 feet cause I couldn't go any higher that than that without Dave's permission. Dave was the first name of the controller who was working at 42. So we didn't believe Dave. And so she's kind of laughing. He says he's got a hijack over there. And I said, I'll get a real controller over there, you know, uh, just off the cuff. Cause we always kid each other all the time, sort of relentlessly, actually. But it turned out to be true. What had happened was, is Dave had accepted the handoff on a flight coming from Boston Center, who had departed Boston and was headed for the West Coast.

46:41It was American 11. And the Boston Center controller called him and said, look, we think American 11 has been hijacked. keep an eye on them and and i'll get back why do they think that uh there was some there was some talk on the frequency i think the hijackers accidentally keyed the mic up and you could hear over the frequency i couldn't but the controllers and the other pilots who were on the boston center frequency at that time heard one of the hijackers broadcasting inadvertently over the frequency saying things like stay in your seats everything's going to be okay that kind of crap. So they were pretty sure, but officially they were saying...

47:21Correct. We didn't know for sure, but the Boston Center controller picked up on it right away and thought, look, I think this guy's a hijack. And then, and so then you get things that confirm that right away. If the aircraft, IFR aircraft that air traffic controllers are talking to don't do anything unless we tell them to, right? They're not allowed to turn. They're not allowed to change their altitude. They're not allowed to change their speed without permission within a certain amount of reason. Anyway, so then the American Airlines aircraft, they turned the transponder off. Big no-no. What's the transponder?

48:01The transponder is the device in the aircraft that broadcasts that four-digit code that tells us, okay, I told that guy to squawk 4055. That must be American 11 or whatever his beacon code was at that time. We call it a beacon code. And when we instruct the aircraft to set it, we use the word squawk. So we'll tell if I need an aircraft to change this beacon code, because maybe I have two airplanes on the same code, which happens occasionally, you tell the aircraft, reset your transponder squawk 4053, or whatever the number is going to be. And the computer will assign it for you. So anyway, the guy, they had turned off his transponder.

48:36So now that changes some things. Now we can't see the altitude that the aircraft is broadcasting anymore. Even with radar? Because there are two kinds of radar. There's primary radar, which is normally what you think of when you think of radar, where the antenna sends out a radio signal, it bounces off an object, and that signal is returned to the antenna, and it calculates how far away it is based on the time it took, how much rotation took place between when the signal was sent and when it was received. So that's called primary radar, or reflective radar. Then there's something called secondary radar or beacon radar, and that is, and it's attached to the same antenna.

49:15There's a device on the antenna called an interrogator. It sends out a signal, and then when it hits an aircraft that has an operating transponder, the transponder responds to that signal. It responds to that interrogation. It broadcasts its four-digit code, and some transponders are capable of broadcasting the aircraft's altitude. We call that mode C. And then there's all kinds of new stuff now that airplanes can broadcast to us through radar and through other surveillance systems. But at the time, the important point was that we could no longer see his altitude. So when it changed the target that we were looking at, the presentation of the target changes shape.

49:57So now we can see what we believe is American 11. We see a very strong primary target because the radar is pretty good. It saw the target, no problem. When they get to low altitude and there's ground clutter or you have lots of precipitation or temperature changes in the air, then the radar can get a little iffy. But we had a perfect radar target on the guy. We still believed that the target we were looking at was American 11. And he turned up to the north first and then he turned to the south and basically flew down the Hudson River Valley toward New York.

50:50now were the guys in boston who they were the first ones to see okay this is a hijack situation yeah was there anything else they could do like they i'm assuming they alerted the military immediately could the military have just like flown a plane right into that plane or do something you know it's tough for me to say what the military could possibly have done um but from my understanding of the situation at the time there was no protocol right you know what are they going to do and how long did it take anyway and who's going to order who's going to order a fighter jet to shoot down an aircraft full of american civilians yeah particularly when don't know what's going on or where it's going.

51:33Like maybe it's just going to land somewhere and have. Exactly. And the vast majority of hijacks in the past all, you know, the aircraft goes someplace else and then they make demands, you know? Right. And that's the experience that we had all trained for. We'd never trained for what happened on 9-11. Did you have another question in there? No, no, no. Okay. So, so anyways, we're looking at the target of what we believe is American 11 and we're pretty certain that we're looking at, at the airplane. It turned out to be the case. We were correct. And so I had no longer, I was no longer busy at this time.

52:02Now, once the American starts heading southbound, you know, we knew we had a hijack at that point. Once the transponder turned off and the guy turned, the controllers in Boston Center were absolutely sure they had a hijack. And somewhere in there, one of the flight attendants on board American 11 had called American Airlines, had called their operating base and told them that the aircraft hadn't been hijacked and they had murdered the pilots. And I think a passenger as well.

52:35So we're looking at this target that we believe is American 11 heading south down the Hudson River. And it doesn't occur to us, to any of us, that a crash is imminent, right? That it's just completely outside the realm of possibility. Like what was in the realm of possibility? Like what were, as... That they were going to take the aircraft somewhere, right? Probably offshore from the United States, land it and make demands like they always do. But like, so like it's a big plane. So they had fuel to get anywhere pretty much, right? Well, the aircraft was fueled to go all the way to California. So they could get someplace if they wanted to, you know, God only knows where.

53:09And it didn't occur to us really to think about where, because at the same time, we're still working. We have traffic to take care of, right? So, but what I did at the time was because I was no longer busy is all the sectors have the ability to communicate with the military. So I called a military radar approach control that is responsible for identifying aircraft offshore before they enter the United States. Huntress ID was the name that they used. And it was part of NORAD, North American Regional Air Defense. So the people that I talked to work up in what used to be Griffiths Air Force Base in Rome, New York.

53:57So their job in general is to prevent aircraft from sneaking into the U.S. Yes, in general. That was this particular group of people that I was going to talk to. So I called Huntress and I tried to tell him, listen, we have a hijack. It's American 11. He's a Boeing 767. I think that's what he was flying.

54:16And he's southbound over to Hudson River. Can you see him? He's about 15 or 20 miles north of the city. I can't remember exactly where he was at the time I called. And the person who answered the phone was a military radar, not a controller, I don't think, but a radar surveillance operator of some sort. And she seemed very young. And she said, where is he again? And I told her again where he was. And she said, where? I don't see him. And I gave her a very precise location. She goes, I said, can't you see him? It's a very strong primary target. It's the only one there within miles. You know, there aren't any other airplanes really within several miles of the target.

54:55She goes, I can't see them. I'm looking at thousands of airplanes. I can't see that one. So I hung up on them. I gave up on NORAD and hung up the phone.

55:05And then while this was going on, right, so every eye in the room is staring at this target very intensely. And how did you, how did anybody, given that there was normal aircraft at the time, like you say, 300 in the area, how did everybody kind of... Well, not that many on that day, but... But how many, how was it possible to focus on all the other aircraft? Probably everybody was like obsessed with, oh my gosh, what's going on here? Yeah, no, we managed to get the job done. It's part of the job is this division of attention where you can, you know, you jump back and forth between things. You're looking at one thing, you do something else.

55:42at this point had there been any command like all aircraft immediately land or no not yet okay no because you know and in the beginning it's like the fog of war really i mean it's like there's a very there's um it's unsettling it's disconcerting everybody's not feeling right and you know you don't you know we weren't trained to project into the future what might be happening and what what we can do about it you know we're all we we do air traffic controllers keep airplanes apart from one another. That's our job. You know, we keep them apart from one another and apart from the ground. And, um, so we're looking at this one target and the controller at 42, um, was, was calling other controllers and he's on the phone with other people.

56:27And he's trying to coordinate and say, you know, can, you know, can, do you see this guy? Make sure you're watching this target. Um, and the manager of the facility was, came in and standing behind the guy at 42, He's got a phone in each year. And so everybody's looking at this target, and we're trying to work at the same time. So while Dave is talking to the guy standing behind him, the manager of the facility, I think, somebody on the other side of the room notices that United 175's target separates from its full data block, which is not a good thing. Meaning it had its route planned out, and now it's separate from it.

57:03Right, so the airplane. That was also going to California. So what happened, yeah, this is another one going to California. I want to say United 175 was going to San Francisco, also departed Boston.

57:15So what happened was is somebody on board the aircraft, whether it was the hijackers, whether it would happen in the scuffle, whether it was intentional, we don't know. Somebody changed the beacon code. So they didn't turn the transponder off in United 175, but they did change the beacon code. So now the computer doesn't know who that airplane is. So United 175's data block starts flying down the airway, but the target turned off the airway and began to climb. And so a controller behind me, who didn't have any traffic at the time, who was just looking at what was going on, said, hey, there's an intruder over Allentown.

57:47Over Allentown, he was in the vicinity of Allentown, Pennsylvania. And the reason he called it an intruder is because when the radar doesn't know who the target is, it changes the presentation of the target. changes it into the letter I, actually a capital I. And that means that that target is what we call a mode C intruder. He's in airspace that he doesn't belong in or the computer doesn't know who he is. And it turned out to be United 175. So now we're staring at United 175. We still don't know that the American is about to or has crashed already. I can't remember exactly what the timeline is, like I said.

58:23When you hung up on NORAD, did you call another military? No, no. By that time I had work to do. You know, so, um, so we're looking at this, now we're looking at this United target and we're looking at the United target. And I want, I want to say maybe the American target had already disappeared, which means he had crashed, you know, um, by the time we're looking at the situation with the United 175, um, I don't recall. And it turns out that one of the departures out of Kennedy who was on my frequency actually asked me, uh, you know, they start saying, look, did you guys know that? the North Tower of the World Trade Center is on fire.

59:02There's a huge column of smoke coming out of it. I said, no. And I didn't put two and two together right then and there. It didn't occur to me that it could possibly have been American 11. So American 11 was flying south down the Hudson, but because United 175 also started to become a problem, you called NORAD, you did what you could, you started focusing on this other situation. Was there anybody tracking American 11 right into the World Trade Center? Yeah, there were people watching them, absolutely. In fact, the guy who was working the Kennedy High Sector vectored an aircraft to intercept that target to see if he could locate the American because we wanted to know, right?

59:37So he vectored an American Eagles flight in a regional jet. Not American Eagles, American Eagle. He vectored this guy to the last known location of the target and asked him if he saw any airplanes in there. And the guy said, no, there's nothing. And the last known altitude of the American, I want to say, was 29 ,000 feet, somewhere in that vicinity. but anyway so the United's target starts climbing turning and now he's on the wrong code he's off course and he's not talking he's not answering Dave his aunt Dave is calling him United 175 New York United 175 if you hear New York ident which is you know they push a button on the transponder it makes the target presentation change again to grab our attention that didn't happen.

1:00:22No response from the aircraft. So now we have another hijack and, and Dave is, you know, he's getting very, very upset now. Two hijacks within, you know, 15 minutes of one another. Like what was it? How did you know he was getting very upset? What did he start saying? Uh,

1:00:44I don't, you know, I can't even remember what the words were, but the room, the tension in the room was already very, very high. and it just went up another five notches. Like, were you thinking, how many more are there? No, you know, it's just one thing. We're just taking things as they came and dealing with them one at a time as they came. And as you know already, and as we're going to get to, this United becomes a big problem for my two departures that I was working that were going to Charlotte.

1:01:14So it turns out that the United starts turning southbound and descending rapidly. And when he started turning to the south and descending, I'm thinking, you know, he could be a problem for these two guys. Because you just had two guys take off. Right. And they're set. Well, I had one who was en route at 26 or 28 ,000 feet. I can't remember. And the U.S. air went up to 28 behind him.

1:01:38So I had these two southwestbound departures and the United starts turning toward them and descending. Now I'm getting really worried. Now I'm trying to formulate a plan. What am I going to do? If I descend these guys, are they going to get under them? Is he going to descend rapidly and beat him down? If I climb them, can I climb them? I can't climb them. Dave's busy. I can't talk to him right now. I can't penetrate his airspace. I mean, push comes to shove. I can do whatever I want if there aren't any targets around. You know, I have that kind of flexibility available to me. The rules have some bendability to them.

1:02:11So the United starts turning toward these guys and descending at them. And now I'm thinking, all right, where are the winds? If I turn them to the right, they're going to slow down. If I turn them to the left, they're going to speed up. I think I can get away from this guy if I go to the left. So my plan now is basically to go to the left, but I'm going to wait and see what he does a little bit more. What's he going to do? Is he going to turn southbound? Is he going to continue like the Americans' last path was southbound, right? Or is he going to turn toward a city? Is he in emergency? Is he not a hijack?

1:02:40Does this guy just have serious problems? He needs to land the airplane. So we were all hoping that that was the case. We really were thinking, you know, maybe this guy has a serious issue and he's trying to deal with. He can't talk to us. He's just trying to get the airplane down and put it on the ground. So he starts turning toward New York City. Now, as he turns from south to southeast, now he's a real threat to my two. He's definitely a threat. There's no question about it. So I start telling my two airplanes about his presence. Delta 2511, you have traffic at 1 o 'clock and 1.5 miles southbound.

1:03:11We believe it's a hijacked Boeing 767 with United Colors. um you know you can and i then i gave him permission to take evasive action i said if this guy becomes a problem for you do whatever you need to do to miss him could he see on his radar he didn't see him um and then i called the traffic to the u.s air behind the delta and i was so worked up and the frequency was getting a little garbled because other you know other people are trying to talk uh when the u.s air responded to the traffic call that i gave him he said, is that the guy we're following? And at the time I might've responded affirmative because I didn't hear exactly what he said.

1:03:48Um, cause I thought that he meant, is that the guy, that the guy we're following is going to, is trying to miss two different things completely. Yeah. You know? Um, so then now I'm, I'm thinking, all right, time, time's up. I got no choices left. I really have to move these guys out of the way because they're not going to, they're not, You know, it's easier for me to see. But you weren't sure, though, what the path of... I wasn't sure which way to go, right? Because if the guy turned any tighter and I went to the right, I was going to put them together, you know, which is what I'm trained to not do.

1:04:23You know, it goes against the grain of everything inside me physically. You can feel it physically as a controller when you do something that's wrong. Your body reacts to it immediately. Even before your conscious brain knows that you've made a mistake, Like your body knows, you start to sweat, you start to shake, your face turns red, whatever.

1:04:44So the United's descending, and now he's pointed right at him. So I finally threw in the towel and said, I got to do something. Delta 2511, turn left immediately, heading 200. US Air 542, turn left immediately, heading 200. So that was about a 50-degree left turn. They both turn. They respond to my transmissions immediately. with, in my judgment, not sufficient enthusiasm. The Delta responded very nonchalantly to the instruction because we don't tell airplanes, we don't use the word immediately when we give aircraft instructions. If we do, they can do things that hurt people in the airplane, right?

1:05:26If I tell an aircraft to climb immediately and somebody's standing up, they're going to the floor. And if the aircraft climbs sufficiently rapidly, anybody who's standing up is gonna be on the floor. If I tell an aircraft to descend rapidly from level flight and he pushes the nose over very fast, people who are not belted in are going to be hitting the ceiling. So you risk breaking people, literally breaking people's necks. So we don't use the word immediately unless it's really, really called for. Gosh, I'm going to use my seatbelts from now on. Yeah. I never do. Right. Right. Yeah, if you're not seated, and another story altogether, I had a situation with severe turbulence where a passenger was hurt.

1:06:06because they actually flew up, hit the ceiling, and then got slammed back down into the floor. But anyway, so I turned the airplanes to the left, and now I'm, I mean, I'm not a very religious guy, but I was basically praying that what I had done was going to be the correct thing. And unfortunately... But even in random chance, okay, so you don't know where United is exactly, right? Or you see it on... No, no, I see him on the radar. I know exactly where he is. I mean, was there, I mean, air is big. Like, was there, okay, admittedly they would get closer, too close for comfort. Like you mentioned earlier, five miles is the perimeter you have to stay outside of.

1:06:47Maybe they, were you worried they were just going to get within those five miles? Or you were actually worried about a collision? No, no, no, I was worried about the threat of a collision. Was that like really possible? Absolutely. Like, what were the odds, even if you had just left it to random chance? They weren't good. I can tell you that. Had I not turned them, the targets would have superimposed at the same altitude. Okay. Because they were going on the same air lane or air... Well, no, they were just where they were located. When the United turned right into these guys, head on.

1:07:20In fact, we looked at the data, and what actually happened was both the Delta and the U.S. Air responded to... So let me back up a little bit. there's another device on the aircraft called TCAS, Terminal Collision Avoidance System. TCAS provides limited radar information to the pilots, and if it detects a threat from another aircraft, and happily, they didn't turn the mode C off on the other aircraft. The transponder was still broadcasting, and it was broadcasting its altitude, right? So if TCAS can see the other aircraft's altitude, it can formulate a solution to miss the other plane, and it will instruct the pilots, descend, descend now or climb, climb now.

1:08:04It doesn't make lateral decisions. The software hasn't gotten there yet. They're working on it, but it's very effective. This was in 2001. Were they making those decisions based on kind of some other pilot wrote, if this happens, then do this? Or was there kind of AI involved? There's an algorithm, absolutely. Yeah, it uses an algorithm. It's very effective and its job is to solve problems that we've screwed up, right, as controllers. And also just stuff happens, you know. So the Delta and the U.S. Air both received, the Delta didn't descend, but the U.S. Air did. And what we think happened is that the hijackers actually heard the TCAS on board their aircraft and stopped descending because they leveled off at 28.2, 28 ,200 feet when they passed the Delta.

1:08:53And they went, you know, when the situation was in play, I'm looking at them. They're eight miles apart, pointed right at each other, opposite direction, closing at a thousand miles an hour. Took my breath away, almost physically. How many miles apart were they? Eight miles apart. Eight miles apart. So going a thousand miles an hour, it's like 12 seconds they're going to hit. It wasn't pretty. So anyway, so the turns ended up working. I turned them both. The hijack aircraft went behind them, but not by much. And the reason it wasn't as, you know, the turns would have worked much better, but the hijacker stopped turning the airplane.

1:09:31So my solution became not so good anymore because they weren't doing, they weren't doing what they were doing when I initiated the solution, you know? So I, I, I used to beat myself up about, you know, maybe I should have turned them to the right. Maybe I should have turned them sooner, all kinds of stuff. And in the end, it doesn't matter because they didn't hit. so the guy ascending though the guy who you instructed to ascend now he's in because the because the united 175 was no longer descending the one that you told to ascend was now in trouble well no i had him level at 28 000 feet so he was level at 28 and the u.s the delta was level at 28 and the u.s air was behind him level at 26 000 feet so the hijackers miss the delta and then they barely missed the u.s air also because they started descending again once they passed the u.s Once they pass the Delta, now they're a threat to the U.S.

1:10:21Air because they start descending and he's at 26 ,000 feet. So they descended right into him. But again, the turns worked, so the hijackers went behind the U.S. Air, but they were close enough that the U.S. Air pilot told me, I'm responding to an RA, a resolution advisory from the TCAS, and they're obligated. Pilots are obligated to do what that thing tells them to do. So if the device says descend now, he has to descend. There's a lot more to it than that, but basically, and he has to inform me that he's doing it. So he says, I'm responding to a TCASRA and I said, I'm sorry about that. I really thought he was going to hit the Delta and basically forgot about the US.

1:10:59But I had turned to both and it turned out to be a non-issue. So we don't know that there's been a crash yet in this room. Other people do, right? Because people who are watching the news know that an aircraft destructed the Royal Trade Center. And the facility chief who was standing behind 42 with a phone in a chair, I think he knew that an aircraft had struck the World Trade Center, but I don't think he knew yet that it was the American. And then we watched the United pointed at the city, and we watched them descending, and he was coming down fast, you know, 3 ,000 feet a minute, 5 ,000 feet a minute, 7 ,000 feet a minute at one point, extremely fast.

1:11:36In fact, so fast that it was difficult to see later on, watch the images on the television where you see the United striking the South Tower at a World Trade Center, And I'm amazed that they were actually able to recover from the dive before they hit the building because they were coming down so fast. Really scary. And we tried to tell ourselves, you know, maybe it's just an emergency and they're trying to go to Newark. Because they were pointed right at Newark before they were pointing, you know, because Newark was between them and the city. Did they have to go past the city to go around for the South Tower?

1:12:10No. Did they have to go into the ocean? No, they were coming basically from the southwest. So they came from like Sandy Hook, New Jersey area. They kind of overflew that area.

1:12:23But they had to turn the aircraft violently because they weren't pointed right at the building. So at the end, you see the aircraft in a very, very steep turn when it impacts the building, and that's because they weren't aiming properly beforehand. Not as easy to fly an airplane that's doing 700 miles an hour or over the ground, as you might think. Yeah, I can't imagine, actually, like, how do you, going 700 miles an hour and you're just a few miles away, hitting, you know, while on the one hand, I can understand the concept of landing on a runway because you're slowing down, you're descending, you're on a route, but hitting a target at that speed seems difficult.

1:13:01Like, okay, and this is a weird question, but on a scale of zero to 10, would you say these guys were good pilots? No, absolutely not, but you don't have to be that good a pilot to just point the thing, you know, you grab the steering wheel, the yoke in an aircraft or the control column and you point it, you know, that's, that's all they had to do. Um, no, but they picked the right day. You know, the visibility was perfect. Right. If they were going to do it, that was the day. Um, but anyway, so we watched the United descending and one of the controllers says, maybe he's trying to get to the fours at Newark, meaning there, there are two runway number four at Newark, four left and four right.

1:13:42So maybe he's trying to hit one of the fours at Newark. And the guy behind me, who's also a former commercial pilot said, no, no, no, he's coming down too fast. He's going, he's going too fast. There's no way he's going to make Newark. He's going in, meaning he's going to crash. And somebody said, no, no, no, maybe he's going to go to LaGuardia, which is on the other side. It was directly opposite of, you know, the World Trade Center was kind of a line, Newark World Trade Center, LaGuardia. So maybe he's trying to get to LaGuardia. And the guy behind me again, he says, no, he's coming down too hard.

1:14:07And we watched. The radar targets update every 12 seconds. I don't remember the exact altitudes we saw during the target presentations, but I want to say 1 ,200 feet, 800 feet. And somewhere in there, the guy behind me, Jimmy, says, no, two more hits. That's it. Meaning we're going to see two more targets appear on the radar, and then he's going to be gone. So we all knew at that point that the aircraft was going to crash, and then he was going to crash in lower Manhattan. and were just, you know, terrified. You could have heard a pin drop in that room. It was awful. Both prior to the near-mid-air collision situation that we had encountered before, dead silence in that room until the targets passed each other.

1:14:53I think I held my breath the entire time. And I actually, that's not true, because I remember jumping up out of my chair and yelling obscenities at the radar, you know because I turned these guys I thought I had done the right thing but then the hijacker stopped turning and they got much closer than I intended to ever get and I screamed at the radar um but then you know so then we watched the United disappear from the radar and we knew we had crashed and it was just kind of like the hell do we do now you know and um but at the same time I'm working traffic I have things to do and I had a job to do so I'm talking airplanes climbing them descending them doing all the airplanes that you were talking to at that point they knew what was happening right or not really i didn't care at that point because i had now i had work to do right because you have to land them all was that the order no i didn't stay in my seat long enough what happened was is the supervisor walked into the room and uh he came over to me and he said do you want to get up and i said if you have somebody to get me up i'd really rather get up because I was having a tough time.

1:15:59I could have worked, but it was just tremendous. I was under tremendous amount of stress at that time. We all were. Like, well, when you say tough time though, like, were you, what were you, what were you feeling exactly? What does that mean? Okay. So that's, that's a good question. So controllers, our job is to keep people safe. And in the end, the way we can, we think about pilots, passengers, airplanes. They're kind of like our babies, right? We take care of them. Some controllers do a better job than others. You know, we're people. But in the end, they're our babies, you know? And watching an aircraft crash at any time, regardless of, you know, the cause, is a tremendously negative thing for a controller.

1:16:47And it can have tremendous emotional effects on controllers' lives. I don't know if you remember the crash in Sioux City, Iowa, where the DC-10 crashed and then flew off into the cornfield, or it didn't fly off, but crashed near the runway and then skidded down into a cornfield, and a lot of people died. I met the controller who was working that day, and it ruined his life. He became a raging alcoholic, couldn't get the images out of his skull, you know, straight PTSD. Steve. Um, so in the room, we, we were having a very difficult time coming to terms with what had just happened. And, uh, my voice was cracking.

1:17:26I'm talking to airplanes and I'm, I'm, you know, tears were streaming down my face cause I knew everybody on that aircraft had just perished. And God only knows how many people on the ground. We didn't know it was the World Trade Center. We didn't know where the aircraft had crashed. I just knew it was lower Manhattan. and um and you were too busy to sit to just yell out hey what happened to that plane or no we knew what happened but but but you just you knew it had crashed but when did you find no it was world trade center uh within a few minutes because because the the chief and the deputy were standing behind 42 when um when the near midair collision happened and they watched and as the United descended toward New York City, the chief sent the deputy into the cafeteria to go look at the television, to look at CNN.

1:18:14So the deputy walked into the cafeteria seconds before the United hit the World Trade Center and he knew it was going to happen. He actually said to the people next to him, there's another one coming. And seconds later, you saw the images of the United crashing into the World Trade Center. And so, and then he came back and reported and he had a phone too. And so we knew within seconds of the United where it crashed. But did you start telling planes then this would happen or you're just kind of like? No, no, no, no. You're not allowed? You don't want to. No, it's just that you don't want to transfer that stress to the pilots.

1:18:48They got enough to worry about already, you know? So just back in one second, at one point when you, right before you called NORAD, you said you had to figure out what you were allowed to tell me what you couldn't. What, not, I don't want you to tell me what you weren't allowed to tell me. No, there's really nothing there. I just wanted to pause for a minute and think about what I was going to say. Okay, all right. I just wondered if there was some other... No, there's no top secret stuff, nothing. No, controllers don't even have to have secret clearances. So the military, it sounds like they were not even really involved at all in the half hour.

1:19:20It turns out that they were deeply involved, but not the person that I talked to. Okay. They were aware of the situation. As soon as Boston Center became aware of it, they were made aware of it right away. But there's nothing they could really do. No, I don't think so. Unless they send a missile. I mean, listen, even if we had airborne fighters over New York City that just happened to be there. Let's take that as a hypothetical case, right? You got airborne fighters who happen to be in the vicinity of New York City who are in a position to maybe respond to this situation. What are they going to do?

1:19:50There was no protocol. There's nobody that can order them to shoot down the civilian aircraft. There's nobody that will. So let's look at it first from the military's point of view. Let's say they knew, yes, these two planes are definitely heading to the World Trade Center. Let's say they knew 100 % chance these two planes are going to hit the World Trade Center. Do you think they would have had the capability and do you think they would have made the decision to send missiles to shoot down the plane? No, absolutely not. Because the person who gave that order would have been vilified for the rest of their lives.

1:20:25Right, because then you don't— Even if it turned out that they were here. Because you just don't know. Right. You know, I don't know. You're saying if they were 100 % sure that they knew they were going to crash into the World Trade Center, which it's— Sorry, James. That's a silly hypothetical. Right. Because once you destroy them, then no one would ever know that that's what was going to happen. Yeah. And all this guy is known for is killing all the civilians. Right. Not that he saved the World Trade Center. And the reason I asked in that way, though, was it's, of course, related to your decision because you were in charge of two missiles, essentially, the two other civilian jets that could have taken them out.

1:21:03The conversation that you're about to have with me came up several times after the situation happened. And what you're going to say in my mind, I'm seeing you, I think that you're going to say, listen, Chris, what if they had actually hit in the air, right? You would have saved all the people in the World Trade Center. One of the towers wouldn't have collapsed. A lot of people on the ground wouldn't have died. You know, some more people on that other aircraft would have perished. But it would have been a different situation altogether. And my answer to that is that that's not even something that, as an air traffic controller, that I could possibly contemplate.

1:21:41Right. Letting two airplanes, allowing two airplanes close enough together to hit. it goes against everything I'm trained to do so much that it actually makes me sick right now thinking about it. And it's also just too, because it sounds like your job during the day, I don't want to simplify it too much, but I'm simplifying it for abstract. Sure, sure, sure, no, of course. Your job during the day is like a video game, right? That's exactly what it is. No, no, that's not a simplification. It's exactly what it is. it's just like a video game and we win every day. Right. And so for me to say, okay, well, here's a video game that you've played a million times.

1:22:24Suddenly it's not Pac-Man anymore. It's Pac-Man. And by the way, this asteroid ship is also in there. Yeah. And one of the Pac-Men have to run into the asteroid. Like it almost doesn't make any sense. So that on that level. And the other, maybe another way to view it is if someone's playing Pac-Man, they try to win. the game. An abstract way to think of it is, you know, I better lose this game so I could do something else with my time. That also would not, it's abstracting outside of the video game, which you're not, you would never do. Absolutely not. No question. You know, and when I say it's like a video game, I don't mean to reduce the seriousness of the job, right?

1:23:05We know what we're responsible for controllers. But we do actually view the situation because it's you doing the same thing as a video game. You take actions that have responses that you see play out on the screen. It's just like a video game. It really is. So what happened at this point? Were you aware at all of the people who crashed in Pennsylvania and the people who crashed into the Pentagon? No, we did not know yet. But so a lot of us were sequestered in a room. They made it, you know, know, they made us recount our experience on a tape recorder. And you did that for, for a cover your ass reasons or for intelligence reasons?

1:23:44You know, I, I think that the FAA at that time, I mean, all large bureaucracies engage in cover your ass behavior at all times. But the, I think at that time they were thinking, listen, we, this is going to be, there's going to be a tremendous criminal investigation. We're going to have to get as much evidence as we can. And it turned out that But listening to us, you know, some people were bawling. They were in tears, you know. So it was passing the microphone around and giving your version of what just happened. And it turned out that people were making mistakes. And, you know, we were already diverging from the facts of the situation.

1:24:19And they didn't need this tape recording we were making. They had all the data they needed. You know, we had the radar data. We have all the radio frequency data recorded. So it turned out to be a non-thing. But one of the things I wanted to say was that, so I don't remember how long after 9-11 had happened, but a friend of mine says, listen, Chris, I have a friend who's a reporter for a newspaper in Hartford, Connecticut, The Current. He'd really like to talk to you. You know, would you do that? And so I did. And I talked to him and he interviewed me on the phone. We had a really, really fascinating conversation.

1:24:58It lasted several hours. and so he wrote an article and a week or two later, he calls me back and he says, Chris, I have a strange request. He says, I have a reader who wants to talk to you. Who's that? He says, well, he was a passenger on the Delta that you vectored to miss the United and he wants to call you and say thank you for saving his life. And so I said, yeah, give him my number. Let him call me. So the guy calls me. He turns out he's some sort of circuit court judge up in Connecticut. And again, fascinating guy. We had a great conversation. He and I talked for hours. And I think that that conversation with him is what really inoculated me against the effects of PTSD.

1:25:49It was a kind of a watershed moment for me. He and I were both in tears on the phone. It was really special. So did he, when he was on the plane, did he sense that was something was going on when they veered to the right or? Nope. No, not at all. It wasn't until he read the article in the newspaper that he found out, he discovered that he was in an incident with one of the hijacked aircraft. And in those three or four months before then, did you have some kind of PTSD? So this is also an interesting question for me personally, because, so I took some time off right away, which, you know, control.

1:26:27Like the next day you didn't show off before. Yeah, you can take traumatic leave. I don't know what they call it now, but at the time that's what it was called. So I planned on taking a few days off. I didn't know how many, but I, you know, I wasn't, there wasn't anything to do anyway. We grounded every aircraft in the country for three days. There were no, the only airplanes in the sky were jets, military jets. Was that hard, by the way, bringing all the planes down? No, not for me because I didn't do it. I got up out of my, the supervisor asked me if I wanted to get up. And I said, yeah. And I got up out of my chair.

1:26:53So, uh, other controllers were there to do, and yes, it was a lot of work. A lot of the work involved just convincing the pilots that they had to land. They didn't believe it, you know? Um, but again, they're required to do what we tell them to do. So, uh, but I, you know, I wasn't there for that, but anyway, so I took a few days off from work. It ended up being about two weeks. And I, I, I happened to think to myself, you know, it would probably be a good idea for me to go see a shrink. So I went and saw a psychiatrist. Just not knowing why really, just maybe this guy can help. I wasn't suffering too bad.

1:27:30Nobody in the country, let alone New Yorkers, could get those images out of their head that day, the next day, the next week, the next month. So I saw a psychiatrist and I spent some time with my family, spent some time with friends. My wife and I went bicycle riding, got out in the open air and did a lot of exercise. And then so the two weeks are almost, I haven't decided when I'm going to come back to work yet, but it's about two weeks later. And I get a phone call from my union rep at the facility. And he says, Chris, there's some guys here that want you to come down and talk to them. Well, who are they?

1:28:06He says, I don't know. He said, well, what do they want? He says, well, they say they're here to help. they're from the government so how could they not be um he said i said well who are they and he told me who they were and um he said well it's it's a critical incident stress management team they say they they might be able to help you i said i don't know that i need help but i'll come talk to him i said would you i said to him would you talk to me he says no i wouldn't talk to him i said well i think i might i'm gonna go talk to him so i went and talked to him so what it turned out to be was the FAA has a, uh, a team, a response team, a critical incident stress management response team with four national coordinators and about 15 members.

1:28:50And all these guys do is respond to situations where controllers have been exposed to, uh, critical incidents. We used to call them traumatic incidents. The phraseology has changed. And so they are actually other air traffic controllers who get some training. They don't become shrinks, you know, but they get some training in talking to other controllers because controllers like cops, firemen, EMTs don't want to talk to shrinks, especially if you're a male, you know, it's, it's the, the whole ego thing. And, you know, so, but they might be willing to talk to one of their colleagues, one of their peers.

1:29:26So, and that's what the, these guys are called. They're called peer counselors. so these guys came to talk to me so there's two or three of them and they had a psychiatrist with them and I think they had a priest and I was the only guy that showed up that day so we're sitting around a big conference table in a conference room and he says you know Chris I don't mean to gang up on you there's a lot of us here I don't want to you know we don't want to intimidate you and I don't think that the process the way we normally would do it is going to work because it's us and you and normally it's a group of of people he says so why don't we just talk let's let's talk about what happened.

1:29:59So I relayed to them the events of that day as I saw them. And then he said, okay, what are you, so what are you doing now? What have you been doing for the past couple of weeks? And I told him, I said, I went and I saw a psychiatrist. I went and I got a lot of exercise. I felt like I just needed to move. You know, I went running, I went bicycle riding, spent a lot of close time with my wife and my baby daughter at the time.

1:30:23um sorry my wife was pregnant baby daughter wasn't born for a month um and uh he says it's funny that you say that because you it seems like and and i said i'm not watching the tv i haven't seen the tv at all since that day and he says it's funny you say that he says because you just listed several of the things that we were going to instruct you to do right and he says it sounds to me like you're already doing the things that we were going to help you learn how to do I really think you should be on this team so a few months later they send me an official invite and I ended up on that team and I stayed on that team and became a national coordinator and I was a national coordinator for 10 years and I was on that team for the rest of my career when I retired in 2014.

1:31:21so now here we are 18 years later to the day because i'll put this out on 9-11 right 18 years later what are the odds that this can happen again like what are the scenarios that bother me if i think about it you know i think it's i think um that it's far far far less likely to occur again and my main reason for saying that is not because now we have armored cockpit doors not because some pilots carry firearms not because they've received special training and had to deal with hijackers but because in my mind uh passengers especially american passengers are not going to let it happen again why do you think why do you think they were i think they'd be much because at the time they didn't know what the hell was happening you know it never occurred in a mic But now we've been, you know, we've all had seen what happened on 9-11 and we all, I know for one, I would stand up and fight.

1:32:21Yeah. You know, whereas I'm not that kind of guy that wants to stand up and fight. I'm a very passive, pacifistic kind of person, you know. I'm not a pugilist at all. So, but certainly the terrorists or whoever would, the hijackers now would have different resources as well. so they could have plastic machine guns that made it through. Right, God only knows what the hell's out there now. So they could just kill all the passengers and then, I don't know, break through the door somehow. But I just don't think it's nearly as likely. And also there are other things happening under the covers that you and I are not aware of, right?

1:32:54In the airline industry, I know for a fact that there are things happening that we don't know about. But like, maybe we don't know exactly, but like, within five mile perimeter, what sort of thing is - So there are cameras inside the aircraft now, right? So the pilots can see what's going on inside the aircraft from the flight deck. I see. So if there's an indication that something's going on, they can do something about it. And there are things that pilots can do if they have enough time to respond. I think the pilots on 9-11 had no time to respond and they were just taken completely unaware.

1:33:28So things pilots could, could they remove oxygen until everyone passes out? You know, that is an absolute possibility. Um... Whether that's something that the airlines have thought of, I'm sure somebody's thought of it, but no, the immediate thing that a pilot can do is move the aircraft in such a way that you can't stand up anymore, right? So they can turn the aircraft upside down. They can move it very rapidly, vertically, up and down, up and down. So the people that are not strapped in are gonna get slammed against the ceiling and against the floor repeatedly. So yeah, no, pilots can do things with the aircraft to prevent people from walking through the aircraft.

1:34:03And how much more automated is flying? Can pilots flick a switch and say, okay, this is now on permanent automatic until it lands? Maybe I'm making that up. Maybe that's science fiction. No, no, no. There's a tremendous amount of automation in the aircraft right now. More than that. Absolutely. Even more than that. And yes, there are aircraft that can land themselves. There have been for a long time, actually, aircraft that can land themselves. It's like the space shuttle was able to land itself, I think. Right. So can you make it so that once the pilot flicks that switch, he cannot take control back without someone on the ground saying, okay, you can take control back?

1:34:44Well, that's, again, one of those things that I believe is probably happening under the covers. You know, we're not going to hear about that. You know, and it's a dangerous proposition. Is it the computer flying the plane, or is it someone on the ground flying the plane then? Well, I think it's a dangerous proposition to think about Having an aircraft that is capable of being taken over by somebody on the ground, right? Because there's a potential risk there, right? Of the link between the aircraft and whoever's controlling it being perpetrated by somebody. But I could... Penetrate. I could...

1:35:24It could be sort of a two-factor verification. Right. So on the plane, I have to first signal first, I want to be taken over. because the pilot sees the hijackers in the back, and then it's not the ground initiating it. The pilot's still in control. So there's another scenario where the hijackers are in control and the ground takes over. So that's much more dangerous. I think it's a very reasonable assumption to believe that there are people out there who are working on solutions like that. And it wouldn't surprise me a bit if that's out there and if it's already installed in airplanes. On a smaller level, you know...

1:35:58And there are also... I'm sorry, real quick. there are also, you could also make it so that the aircraft itself says, listen, I don't like what you're doing with the airplane. I'm not going to listen to you anymore. So the aircraft can disconnect itself from inputs from the control, you know, from the control column. And the aircraft might have some mode or, you know, you could create a situation technologically where the aircraft says, we're done. I'm going to go land a plane somewhere safe, right? You know, and not let the pilots have any more input whatsoever into the flight of the aircraft.

1:36:33So given that there's so many technological solutions and there's marshals in the planes, why do you think we have such a backlog in the airports with the TSA and, oh, I got to take my shoes off? And I'm not complaining if this is truly saving lives, but is it or is it just reactive? Like someone has a bomb in their shoes, so now we have to take their shoes off. I don't know. I think some of it's definitely reactive, but I mean, it's, where, would you say 18 liters now? it's 18 years later now. Oh, what was the incident in Queens in September? A month or two later. Right. American 57 had crashed in Far Rockaway.

1:37:08Was that a hijack? No, absolutely not. Okay, definitely not. No, no. It was a combination of really poor aircraft design and training. The vertical stabilizer separated from the aircraft because the pilots, the pilot who was flying the aircraft at the time and move the rudder full extension to one side, then the other, and back to the other side. So he was basically whipping the tail around like a whip, and it flipped the vertical stabilizer right off the aircraft. Why was he doing that? Because they encountered the wake turbulence behind a 7, I want to say a 747, another very heavy aircraft in front of him.

1:37:46And he was, I'm not sure why he moved the rudder pedals full travel, you know, all the way to the left, and then all the way to the right, and then back again. But... there are actually rudder travel limits on most airplanes at certain speeds. You can't move the rudder a certain amount of high speeds. You don't want the rudder to be able to move very much at all. If you move it too much, you can do very bad things to the airplane, like lose the tail. Why the rudder limitations weren't in place, I don't know. Maybe they didn't need to be at those speeds. But it was definitely not a hijack in my mind.

1:38:21Absolutely not. On a smaller level, you know, we have companies like Uber now talking about, you know, flying cars and, you know, going from one building to another. Potentially extremely complicated. Yeah, because how do you, A, how do you do the air traffic control for that? Right. B, can you really take off from the tops of buildings and, you know. Well, I mean, Pan Am used to do it from the building on top of the Grand Central. Yeah, for a helicopter? Yeah, you used to have helicopters that took off from the top of the building and flew to Kennedy or the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia. But now these are like smaller planes to just get you around town.

1:38:59So how is there going to be air traffic in control for that? I think they're going to have to be regulated in exactly the way that helicopters are regulated now. So you have to land at a heliport, an established place. But the risk for terrorism there too is pretty big. It is. The more people you put in the air, it seems like the more... It is. But again, the smaller the vehicle, the less damage it's capable of doing. You know, you're not dealing with a weapon of mass destruction if you crash a helicopter like you are if you crash an airliner. At least that's the way I see it. So, well, you know, Chris Tucker, you know, A, first, thanks for everything you did on that day.

1:39:37You saved lives. You had to deal with a lot that many people didn't have to deal with. And what do you work on now? Your work with the FAA still? So I retired from the FAA with 25 years in as a controller in 2014. Went into the financial industry with a mutual friend. And it turned out to not work out for me. I wanted to become a trader, a financials trader, trading futures. And it's bizarre because as an air traffic controller, which is a very stressful, like we already discussed, job, I was pretty good at it. I wasn't the best, but I wasn't the worst either. I was pretty good at it. But I was very confident of my ability when I was working.

1:40:21And I could be, there are times, it sounds odd to hear a safety professional talk about being aggressive, but I could be a very aggressive controller. And I was very confident. But as a trader, I was timid as heck and not capable of making rational decisions once I had a large position on. It's hard. I don't think anybody really can do that. I wasn't good at it. So then I went, I left that field in 2015. I gave it a year. The wife and I had an agreement. If it doesn't work out after your year, the fallback is I go get a job as an instructor teaching air traffic control at the facility that I used to work at.

1:40:56So that's what I did. 2015, I went back to New York Center as an instructor. And I worked as an instructor there for, I want to say, a year and a half. And then somebody mentioned to me the possibility of working on the software that air traffic controllers use at the FAA's Technical Center in Atlantic City. So I got a job doing that. And the reason I took it is because it paid three times more what I was making. And it's fascinating. I work as a software tester now. I test the software that air traffic controllers use before they get it. We're installing new stuff. So there's a new thing in air traffic control called Datacom where the controllers can actually text the aircraft.

1:41:36And so it eliminates the 1940s technology that we're still using today to talk to airplanes on a radio, right? If you have a lot of airplanes on a frequency and you're very busy, they all start talking at the same time. You can't hear what's being said and nothing gets done. It's a dangerous thing. So Datacom is going to eliminate a lot of that. And we can actually send instructions to the pilot without ever speaking to them. and it reduces a lot of opportunities for errors to happen. Because in the radio world, if I tell an aircraft American, and it's busy in the radio, you know, you and I can hear each other very clearly right now, right?

1:42:14And the people who are listening to this can probably hear me very clearly, but radio is not like that. It's a little fuzzy sometimes. Sometimes it gets very fuzzy. Because the bandwidth for that probably was sort of, you know, sort of cardoned off 50 years ago. Right, right. So it's still the same thing with phone calls. And so, you know, if you have a situation where I give an aircraft who has a similar sounding call sign and instruction and another aircraft who has a call sign that's very similar to that one, hears it, he might respond instead of the aircraft I instructed. That happens relatively frequently.

1:42:50You hear missed readbacks where you instruct an aircraft to descend and maintain 1-1000. Roger, descend and maintain one, zero thousand. You know, the guy reads back 10 instead of 11. That's a bad thing. You know, I stopped them at 11 for a reason. There's probably traffic at 10. So those kinds of errors should be basically eliminated with the use of data comp. So that'll be cool. So I guess, final question, why is the only time I ever want tomato juice when I'm flying on a plane? I have no idea. But I hear that from a lot of people. Like everybody on a plane, the fact that they even offer tomato juice on a plane and they don't offer it anywhere else in the world except when you're flying.

1:43:33What's the deal with tomato juice and being at high altitudes? I can't help you, man. I don't know. And is the air significantly different between first class and coach that you're breathing? I don't think so, but I don't know. No, I don't think so. All right. Well, Chris Tucker, sorry to end with such naive questions. So easy questions I wanted to know. But again, thank you for everything you did on 9-11. It was certainly the most terrifying day of my life. And hearing your story. Well, like the rest of the people I work with, we will just tell you that I was just doing my job. And that's true.

1:44:10I mean, we were just all there doing our jobs. So the portion that I had to deal with had a relatively happy outcome for a certain small group of people. Horrible day. but it could have been even worse for me and it wasn't. All right, well, thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure, James. Thank you.