Hijackers killed stewardesses to access cockpits
The US plane hijackers murdered stewardesses with knives to draw pilots from their cockpits, it emerged today as investigators began to piece together the full horror of the worst terror attack in history.
First details of the amazingly low-tech operation by the extremists came from passengers on board the doomed jetliners who managed to make harrowing mobile phone calls before they crashed.
They reported how men armed with small craft-style knives were stabbing stewardesses, apparently in an attempt to force crew on the flight deck to unlock the doors to the cockpits.
Businessman Peter Hanson, who was with his wife and young son on board the United Airlines flight that plunged into the World Trade Centre, called his father in Connecticut and managed to say a stewardess had been stabbed, before being cut off.
Alice Hoglan in San Francisco said her 31-year-old son Mark Bingham phoned her from aboard the Pennsylvania crash flight to say: ‘‘We’ve been taken over. There are three men that say they have a bomb.’’
Terrorism experts said the hijackers could have armed themselves with nothing more than pocket knives.
‘‘The reason that knives have been chosen is because it would have reduced their security risks,’’ said Mike Yardley, a former British army officer.
‘‘Remember, they are trying to pull this off four times - if they had risked firearms, if one person had been seized, the whole operation could have been compromised.’’
He added: ‘‘Unfortunately, terrorism is easy, once you cross the boundary of deciding to do it.’’
It is even possible the hijackers marched on board with their weapons without even bothering to smuggle them.
Passengers on US domestic flights would not have had a pocket knife taken off them if it was small enough, said Mr Yardley. Yet it would have been all the terrorists needed to take control of the aircraft.
Reports from those on board two of the planes suggested each was taken by a team of three hijackers.
In each case, at least one of them is likely to have been a trained pilot who took over the controls to steer the planes on their lethal flight paths.
In Boston, from where two of the doomed aircraft took off, five Arab men have apparently already been identified as suspects in the terror outrage.
It is reported police seized a rented car containing Arabic-language flight training manuals at Logan International Airport.
Two of the men were brothers whose passports were traced to the United Arab Emirates, and one of the men was a trained pilot.
Investigators are believed to suspect the two brothers were aboard hijacked United Airlines flight 175, the plane that crashed into the second World Trade Centre tower.
