The phone calls from the planes

On Flight 11, attendants Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney reached American Airlines staff and described stabbings, a passenger killed, Mace and a possible bomb; Sweeney’s call, by airphone, lasted about 12 minutes. On Flight 93 the passengers and crew used GTE airphones and cell phones. [1][2]

The skeptics’ case is that cell phones did not work at 30,000 feet in 2001. Popular Mechanics, debating the makers of Loose Change in 2006, said its experts told it cell phones do work at that altitude. Most of the calls, in any case, were not made on cell phones. [3]

Barbara Olson, a lawyer and commentator, was aboard Flight 77. Her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, told the FBI on 11 September that someone in his office said she was on the phone; he spoke to her for about a minute; she said the plane had been hijacked, the hijackers had knives and box cutters, and the passengers had been moved to the back. The call was cut off, and she called again. [1]

A May 2004 Justice Department briefing to Commission staff said all calls from Flight 77 were made by airphone. Its list shows a 9:18:58 call from Barbara Olson to the Justice Department marked “No Connection,” and four calls to unknown numbers lasting between about a minute and a half and four and a half minutes. Interviews, including with the assistant who answered Ted Olson’s phone, led the briefers to conclude that all the unknown calls were from her. [2]

Skeptics argue that the government’s own list shows no connected call from Olson. The government’s answer is that the connected calls are the unknown ones. Neither side has produced the underlying phone-company records publicly.