Template:(9:25 a.m.-9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Dulles Airport Controllers

(9:25 a.m.-9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Dulles Airport Controllers Mistake Flight 77 for a Military Fighter
After air traffic controllers at Washington Dulles International Airport notice an unidentified aircraft, later determined to be Flight 77, approaching Washington on their radar screens, they initially think it is a military fighter plane, due to its high speed and the way it is being flown. [ABC NEWS, 10/24/2001;

The Dulles controllers are unable to identify the plane because its transponder has been turned off. [WASHINGTON POST, 9/11/2001; WASHINGTON POST, 9/12/2001] It is flying at almost 500 miles per hour while approaching Washington, and then performs a rapid downward spiral, “dropping the last 7,000 feet in two and a half minutes,” before hitting the Pentagon. [CBS NEWS, 9/21/2001; USA TODAY, 8/13/2002]

Controller Danielle O’Brien will later recall: "“The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane. You don’t fly a 757 in that manner. It’s unsafe.” [ABC NEWS, 10/24/2001]"

Another controller, Todd Lewis, will recall: "“[N]obody knew that was a commercial flight at the time. Nobody knew that was American 77.… I thought it was a military flight. I thought that Langley [Air Force Base] had scrambled some fighters and maybe one of them got up there.… It was moving very fast, like a military aircraft might move at a low altitude.” [MSNBC, 9/11/2002]"

Yet many people who have met Hani Hanjour, the hijacker allegedly at the controls of Flight 77, considered him to be a very poor pilot. Just a month previously, an airport refused to rent him a single-engine Cessna plane because instructors there found his flying skills so weak. [GAZETTE (GREENBELT), 9/21/2001; NEWSDAY, 9/23/2001] And an employee at a flight school Hanjour attended earlier in the year will later comment: “I’m still to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon. He could not fly at all”. [NEW YORK TIMES, 5/4/2002]