Template:(8:25 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Boston Realizes

(8:25 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Boston Realizes with Certainty that Flight 11 Has Been Hijacked
According to Terry Biggio, the operations manager at Boston Center, the center initially thought Flight 11 “was a catastrophic electrical failure and… was diverting to New York”

However, at about 8:24 a.m., controllers heard two radio transmissions from it, with the voice of a hijacker declaring, “We have some planes”.

Pete Zalewski, who is handling Flight 11, says that after the second of these: “I immediately knew something was very wrong. And I knew it was a hijack.” He alerts his supervisor. Lino Martins, another Boston air traffic controller, says, “the supervisor came over, and that’s when we realized something was serious.”

However, two senior FAA officials—Bill Peacock and David Canoles—later say that the hijacker transmissions were not attributed to a flight, so controllers didn’t know their origin. An early FAA report will similarly refer to them as having come “from an unknown origin.” But right away, the center begins notifying the chain of command that a suspected hijacking is taking place.

However, some reports claim that controllers decided Flight 11 was probably hijacked earlier than this, by about 8:20 a.m..