Flight 77

American Airlines Flight 77 was a scheduled domestic transcontinental passenger flight from Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles. The Boeing 757-200 aircraft serving the flight was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on the morning of September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. The hijacked airliner was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, killing all 64 aboard and another 125 in the building.

Flight 77 became airborne at 08:20 ET. Thirty-one minutes after takeoff, the attackers stormed the cockpit and forced the passengers and crew to the rear of the cabin, threatening the hostages but initially sparing all of them. Lead hijacker Hani Hanjour assumed control of the aircraft after having undergone extensive flight training as part of his preparation for the attack. In the meantime, two people aboard discreetly made phone calls to family members and relayed information on the situation without the knowledge of their assailants.

Hanjour flew the airplane into the west side of the Pentagon at 09:37. Many people witnessed the impact, and news sources began reporting on the incident within minutes, but no clear footage of the crash itself is available to the public. The 757 severely damaged an area of the Pentagon and caused a large fire that took several days to extinguish. By 10:10, the damage inflicted by the aircraft and ignited jet fuel led to a localized collapse of the Pentagon's western flank, followed forty minutes later by another five stories of the structure. Flight 77 was the third of four passenger jets to be commandeered by terrorists that morning, and the last to reach a target intended by al-Qaeda. The hijacking was to be coordinated with that of United Airlines Flight 93, which was flown in the direction of Washington, D.C., the U.S. capital. The terrorists on Flight 93 had their sights set on a federal government building not far from the Pentagon, but were forced to crash the plane in a Pennsylvania field when the passengers fought for control after being alerted to the previous suicide attacks, including Flight 77's.

The damaged sections of the Pentagon were rebuilt in 2002, with occupants moving back into the completed areas that August. The 184 victims of the attack are memorialized in the Pentagon Memorial adjacent to the crash site. The park contains a bench for each of the victims, arranged according to their year of birth.

Background

The flight was commandeered as part of the September 11 attacks. The attacks themselves cost somewhere in the region of $400,000 and $500,000 to execute, but the source of this financial support remains unknown. Led by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was described as being the "principal architect" of the attacks in the ''9/11 Commission Report'', al-Qaeda was motivated by several factors, not least of which was anti-Americanism and anti-Western sentiment. Because al-Qaeda only had the resources to commandeer four passenger jets, there was disagreement between Mohammed and Osama bin Laden over which targets should be prioritized. Mohammed favored striking the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, while bin-Laden was bent on toppling the United States federal government, a goal he believed could be accomplished by destroying the Pentagon, the White House and the United States Capitol. Though bin Laden himself expressed a preference for the destruction of the White House over the Capitol, his subordinates disagreed, citing its difficulty in striking from the air. Hani Hanjour―likely while in the presence of fellow Flight 77 accomplice Nawaf al-Hazmi―scoped out the Washington metropolitan area on July 20, 2001, by renting a plane and taking a practice flight from Fairfield, New Jersey to Gaithersburg, Maryland in order to determine the feasibility of each of the possible candidates.

In the end, 19 terrorists participated in the attacks against the United States, consisting of three groups of five men each and one group of four. The nine hijackers on Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 93 were assigned the task of striking governmental structures in or near the national capital of Washington, D.C., and as such, the objective was for the two hijackings to be coordinated insofar as both planes being aimed towards targets in the Washington metropolitan area. Significant complications faced by the four terrorists on Flight 93 ensured that Flight 77 was the only one to successfully attack a target intended by al-Qaeda when it struck the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia at 09:37, while a passenger uprising forced the hijackers aboard Flight 93 to crash the plane in rural Pennsylvania.

Regardless, the degree of coordination between Flight 77 and Flight 93 was evidently less than that of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, the two airliners that were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center 17 minutes apart in a joint attack on New York City. Flights 11 and 175 both departed from Logan International Airport in Boston for Los Angeles International Airport, and crashed into targets that stood next to each other, in contrast to the Pentagon and the federal government building Flight 93 was set to crash into, which were simply located in the same general area.

One noteworthy difference between the attacks in the National Capital Region and those in New York is that the teams on Flights 77 and 93 did not follow suit with their counterparts on Flights 11 and 175 by booking planes from the same airport with the same California destination in mind. Flight 77's group hijacked a plane out of Dulles International Airport in Virginia, conveniently situated near the Pentagon and consequently the capital, on a flight path destined for LAX. Conversely, Flight 93 departed from Newark International Airport in New Jersey, nearly 200 miles northeast of D.C., bound for San Francisco International Airport. There was also no contact between Hanjour and Flight 93 hijacker pilot Ziad Jarrah on the day of the attacks, whereas Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi spoke over the phone while preparing to board their respective flights, apparently to confirm the attacks were ready to begin.

Hijackers

The hijackers on American Airlines Flight77 were five Saudi men between the ages of 20 and 29. They were led by Hanjour, who piloted the aircraft into the Pentagon. Hanjour first arrived in the United States in 1990.

Hanjour trained at the CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, earning his FAA commercial pilot's certificate in April 1999. He had wanted to be a commercial pilot for Saudia but was rejected when he applied to the civil aviation school in Jeddah in 1999. Hanjour's brother later explained that, frustrated at not finding a job, Hanjour "increasingly turned his attention toward religious texts and cassette tapes of militant Islamic preachers." Hanjour returned to Saudi Arabia after being certified as a pilot, but left again in late 1999, telling his family he was going to the United Arab Emirates to work for an airline. Hanjour likely went to Afghanistan, where Al-Qaeda recruits were screened for special skills they might have. Already having selected the Hamburg cell members, Al Qaeda leaders selected Hanjour to lead the fourth team of hijackers.

In December 2000, Hanjour arrived in San Diego, joining "muscle" hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who had been there since January of that year. Alec Station, the CIA's unit dedicated to tracking Osama bin Laden, had discovered that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar had multiple-entry visas to the United States. An FBI agent inside the unit and his supervisor Mark Rossini (Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Supervisory Agent) sought to alert FBI headquarters, but the CIA officer supervising Rossini at Alec Station rebuffed him on the grounds that the FBI lacked jurisdiction.''The Spy Factory''
PBS Frontline episode based on James Bamford's book, ''Shadow Factory''

Soon after arriving in San Diego, Hanjour and Hazmi left for Mesa, Arizona, where Hanjour began refresher training at Arizona Aviation. In April 2001, they relocated to Falls Church, Virginia, where they awaited the arrival of the remaining "muscle" hijackers. One of these men, Majed Moqed, arrived on May 2, 2001, with Flight175 hijacker Ahmed al-Ghamdi from Dubai at Dulles International Airport. They moved into an apartment with Hazmi and Hanjour.

On May 21, 2001, Hanjour rented a room in Paterson, New Jersey

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