area b so it could be with the controllers, be with the supervisors and look at the radar display. you wanted to see that plane? absolutely. walked up to the radar screens right in here, and went back and forth between the radar screens looking at the activity and take appropriate abbings and make the right decisions. with flight 11 not responding, controllers turned to other eyes in the sky asking other commercial airline pilots if they could spot the american airlines jet. one of the crews responding, united flight 175. you can see american 767 out there, please? okay, we re looking. negative contact. united 175, you have him at your 12:00 now? five to ten miles. affirmative. we have him. he looks about 29, 28,000. one of those planes you contacted was united. yes. and united was one of the
during the day where, you know, i was absolutely horrified. the image would not stop him. days after 9/11 days after his company lost two planes, tim duffy volunteered to fly a united airlines jet to tokyo. in between commercial assignments, he would patrol the east coast in his fighter jet. faa managers terry biggio and mike mccormick would take this day and ask what more they can do? after invading iraq, the u.s. government would try to rebuild iraq s infrastructure, including its air traffic control system. mike mccormick volunteered and recruited others, including biggio, whose brother-in-law was fighting there for the u.s. i felt like i was on the sidelines. i felt i could do more. i ve got all this experience. i was an faa academy instructor. they needed a training program for the iraqi controllers, and
all i know is that there was trouble, and i wanted to warn everybody. one of those flights ballinger tried to warn are the airline s version of united flight 39. i was accepteding out messages one after another. i think i sent 122 messages in a short time, an hour, two i don t know what it was. like screaming on the keyboard. i don t want to get the captain excite or put something in like are you in trouble? i just sent them a discreet message can i be of assistance? can i help you? at that time we had huge tvs that came on with cnn. this just in. you are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. that is the world trade center, and we i saw the second airplane, which i didn t know at the time, was my airplane, 175, hit the second tower. that looks to me certainly a passenger jet. and i thought the most success sixty method of doing it with the least amount of words,
they were hijacked. supervisor rich was working one last day before leaving the earl for a new job. drinking my coffee, and just realizing this is the last day, and it was kind of bittersweet, and i hear a commotion or someone talking about something hit a building in new york. i go, oh, that s odd. at that moment one of his workers catches his attention. belme is now footnote 81. he is white as a ghost and i could tell something is wrong. he says i just got a call from 175. the crew has been killed. the flight has been hijacked. inside united s maintenance office belme was overseeing the routine calls, flight crews make in the air, air phones dialed to
think that 9/11 is why i was here. the united airlines dispatcher ed ballinger left the airline after 44 years. he has thought about but has not talked to the relatives of those who died on united flight 93. the flight he tried to warn. to say he was sorry. 9/11 commission investigators say there was nothing more ballinger or any of the footnotes in the story could have done. still, ballinger remains haunted by the what ifs still trying to put 9/11 in his wake. when we left him, he and his wife were waiting to sail away again. rich belme took the phone call from flight 93.