was a morning flight that regularly flew from
Logan International Airport in
East Boston, Massachusetts to
Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in
Los Angeles, California . On
September 11 ,
2001 , the
United Airlines Boeing 767-222 , registered N612UA,
1 was
Hijacked and crashed in
New York City during the
September 11, 2001 Attacks . It was the second plane hijacked and flown into the
World Trade Center , but was the single airline crash that morning to be witnessed live on television around the world as it happened. It was preceded by
American Airlines Flight 11 , which had struck the top of the North Tower 17 minutes earlier. The resultant inferno drew live mass media attention on to the scene of the impending Flight 175 crash into the nearby South Tower.
The hijackers were:
Flight 175 was scheduled to depart at 8:00 EDT and left the gate at 7:59 but due to routine morning taxiing times, the flight departed the runway at 8:14. Had the flight been scheduled to depart 15 minutes earlier, it most likely would have been hijacked around the same time as Flight 11.
The flight was piloted by Captain out their viewpoint, and the response was affirmative. They were ordered to maintain distance from the flight since it was now known that it had been hijacked.
2 Approximately 7 minutes later, UA175 was also hijacked.
They claimed they had a bomb, though this is not substantiated. The assailants used knives and mace to subdue members of the flight crew and the pilots.
At 8:41, the pilots overheard suspicious transmission ordering people to "stay in your seats" and reported to
Air Traffic Control .
3
At 8:47, air traffic control received the first indications that the plane was hijacked. The transponder code was changed twice but was never turned off. This allowed ATC to continually track the flight and monitor flight data, including altitude. At around this time, the flight had a near midair collision with
Delta Air Lines Flight 2315 , reportedly missing the plane by only 200 feet, following a warning from an air traffic controller to the Delta crew that United Flight 175 had been hijacked.
4 In five minutes, there was no doubt of an emergency, as the plane had radically changed course and was not responding. Despite reports that one of the passengers called his mother and told her they were thinking of storming the
Cockpit , it appears that no such intervention took place.
By 8:58, the plane was heading towards New York City and descended from an altitude of 28,500 feet over New Jersey. From the time al-Shehhi completed the turn toward New York (approximately 8:58) to the moment of impact (9:03), the plane went into a sustained power dive, descending at about 10,000 feet per minute.
Delta Air Lines Flight 2315 was a flight from
Hartford ,
Connecticut to
Tampa ,
Florida . Flight 175 nearly collided in midair with the flight just minutes before crashing into the South Tower of the
World Trade Center .
United 175 flew within about of Delta 2315, as air traffic controller Dave Bottiglia frantically tried to tell the Delta pilot to take evasive action. He was the first person in the control center to realize that Flight 175 was hijacked when he gave directions for a turn. Flight 175 didn't respond, it instead accelerated and headed toward Delta Air Lines Flight 2315. The controller commanded the Delta pilot, "Take any evasive action necessary. We have an airplane that we don't know what he's doing. Any action at all"
When the plane passed by, the control center added Flight 175 on the list of hijacked planes.
