MItchell Zuckoff - Fall and Rise - The Story of 9/11

Melodie sobbed with relief. The receptionist thoughtfully asked if she wanted to send LeRoy a message through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS. Melodie took several deep breaths. Her voice cracking, she asked that the message to her husband read, “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

As sent by Tara Campbell, a United flight operations service representative, the message read: “LeRoy, Melody [ sic ] wants to make sure you are O.K.! Send me back a message.”

Melodie’s message reached Flight 93 at 9:22 a.m., the same time as either Jason or LeRoy casually complained about the headwinds to an air traffic controller.

ACARS messages generally arrive in the cockpit in one of two ways: either an indicator light flashes MSG, to alert pilots to a digital message on their screens, or a hard copy automatically prints out at a console between the pilots’ seats. Airline dispatchers can also alert pilots with a bell that chimes when an electronic ACARS message arrives. Campbell had the ability only to send Melodie’s message to the Flight 93 cockpit printer.

Personal messages were unusual on the ACARS system, yet despite the request that he reply, LeRoy didn’t do so. It’s possible that neither he nor Jason noticed the message, as they carried out routine duties. When she didn’t hear back, Tara Campbell sent Melodie’s message to the cockpit printer a second time, and then a third. There was still no response.

There might have been a benign if multifaceted explanation why LeRoy didn’t answer: not having been warned about multiple hijackings that had begun roughly an hour earlier; unaware of the World Trade Center crashes that had begun more than a half hour earlier; uninformed about the burning towers that Melodie had seen on television; not knowing that another transcontinental flight had disappeared from radar—without all this information, it’s possible that LeRoy couldn’t imagine why his wife was worried. With blue skies ahead and a job to do, perhaps he didn’t see a reason to reply immediately.

While she waited, Melodie held tight to the receptionist’s promise that “everything is okay.”

AT NEARLY THE same time, without direction from airline officials, the FAA, or anyone else, one midlevel United Airlines employee felt stirred by the same cautious impulse that seized Melodie Homer.

At sixty-two, balding and ruddy-cheeked, a hobby sailor in his free time, Ed Ballinger had started working for United Airlines in 1958 as a teenage weather clerk. Forty-three years later, he’d risen to transcontinental dispatcher in the airline’s Chicago operations headquarters. Ballinger wasn’t scheduled to work September 11, but he owed his employer a day, so he arrived at eight o’clock Eastern time and began his shift.

Ballinger’s job at United called for him to monitor the progress of flights assigned to him, to inform pilots of safety information, and to cancel or redirect flights that he and the pilots believed couldn’t operate without undue risk. He based his decisions on a company-wide priority list called the Rule of Five: Safety, Service, Profitability, Integrity, and Responsibility to the Passenger.

When he arrived at work, Ballinger harked back to his first job at United and took note of the perfect weather across the United States for the sixteen flights he’d track. Two of those were United 175 from Boston and United 93 from Newark.

Unlike FAA air traffic controllers, Ballinger normally didn’t use radar to track his flights; he followed their progress with a computer system that anticipated where a plane presumably would be along its route based on its flight plan. He focused much of his time on reviewing preflight plans such as fuel load and flight path before approving takeoffs, while keeping track of real and potential delays. Once flights were in the air, United pilots primarily communicated with FAA controllers. Ballinger and other dispatchers couldn’t monitor radio calls between flights and the FAA, so to a large degree he remained in the dark, too.

Sometimes even Ballinger’s fellow United Airlines employees weren’t much help, either. When a flight attendant aboard Flight 175, believed to be Robert Fangman, reported the plane’s hijacking to the United maintenance center in San Francisco, roughly ten minutes passed before that information reached Ballinger in Chicago. Immediately, Ballinger sent a carefully worded, purposely vague ACARS message to the United Flight 175 cockpit: “How is the ride. Any thing [ sic ] dispatch can do for you.”

If Flight 175 pilots Victor Saracini and Michael Horrocks had been at the controls under duress from hijackers, they might have signaled trouble, perhaps by using the hijack code word “trip.” But based on the telephone calls from United 175’s passengers and crew, the pilots almost certainly were already dead. Either way, they would soon be. Ballinger sent that message at 9:03 a.m., at almost the precise moment that Flight 175 plowed into the South Tower.

Five minutes later, Ballinger learned about the ground stop around New York City, so he sent messages to a half dozen United planes at New York–area airports, telling them to stay put.

As information churned around United’s headquarters, Ballinger pieced together what he knew: two planes had hit the World Trade Center; Flight 175 had been hijacked; and the FAA had ordered a ground stop. The first priority on United’s Rule of Five rang clear in his mind: safety. He needed to spread the word, by alerting “his” pilots to the violent cockpit takeover tactics hijackers had used aboard Flight 175.

At 9:19 a.m., Ballinger hurriedly began to send ACARS messages to his flights, one after another, first to planes that hadn’t yet taken off, and then in order of departure time: “Beware any cockpit introusion [ sic ]. Two aircraft in NY, hit Trade C[e]nter Builds.” Ballinger sent the message in batches, to several flights at a time. One message went to Flight 175, which had crashed twenty minutes earlier. In the heat of the moment, Ballinger sent the message despite already knowing that Flight 175 had been hijacked; he didn’t yet know that it was the plane that had hit the South Tower.

Ballinger’s ACARS messages marked the first direct warnings of danger to planes by United Airlines or American Airlines, or from air traffic control, for that matter. To be certain that his warnings reached the pilots, Ballinger sent them as both digital messages, with a chime, and as printed-out text messages. He knew that every cockpit contained a fire ax, located behind the first officer’s seat. Ballinger expected pilots who received his message to move the hammer-sized weapon to the floor near their feet, for easy access, to defend their planes, their lives, and the innocents on board.

Shortly before he sent the warning to Flight 93, Ballinger received a happy-go-lucky ACARS message from Captain Jason Dahl: “Good morning … Nice clb [climb] outta EWR [Newark Airport].” Jason commented about the sights from the cockpit and the weather, then signed off with his initial, J .

After Ballinger began notifying his flights to guard their cockpits, United’s air traffic control coordinator sent his own message of warning to the airline’s dispatchers: “There may be [additional] hijackings in progress. You may want to advise your [flights] to stay on alert and shut down all cockpit access [inflight].” Ballinger didn’t notice the message; he was already too busy contacting his flights.

While Ballinger progressed through his list, Melodie Homer’s ACARS message reached the Flight 93 cockpit first. One minute later, at 9:23 a.m., Ballinger sent Jason Dahl and LeRoy Homer Jr. his cautionary message to “beware.”

Less than a minute later, Ballinger and other dispatchers received word from United’s chief operating officer, Andy Studdert, that “Flt 175–11 [denoting the date] BOS/LAX has been involved in an accident at New York.”