What Happened on 9/11: The Four Hijackings, How the Towers Collapsed, and the Background

The setting is the East Coast of the United States. It was an unremarkable Tuesday. In a country as large as the United States, many people fly routinely, and that day was no different. Among the passengers, however, were a total of 19 members with ties to the Islamist extremist terrorist organization al-Qaeda.

The video explains that airport security screening at the time was unbelievably lax by today's standards. Screeners were employees of private companies contracted by the airlines. As a result, the top priority was not to interfere with airline operations. Even people without identification or a boarding pass could go right up to the boarding gate. According to the video, no one at the time imagined that anyone would hijack an airliner and trade their own life to kill large numbers of civilians. The world would learn how badly mistaken that assumption was, the video says.

At 7:59 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 took off from Boston bound for Los Angeles. There were 11 crew members and 81 passengers, five of whom were terrorists. One of them had been selected for additional security screening, but reportedly boarded without any particular problem.

At 8:14, United Airlines Flight 175, also flying from Boston to Los Angeles, took off. Of its 9 crew members and 56 passengers, five were terrorists. Right around this time, the terrorists aboard American Airlines Flight 11, which had departed earlier, began to act. The hijackers were organized into one pilot and four who would subdue the crew and passengers. They took control of the aircraft in no time and were able to fly it as they pleased. As one reason the plane was seized so quickly, the video points to a later finding that crews at the time had been trained to "not resist hijackers and comply with their demands."

At 8:20, American Airlines Flight 77 took off from Washington Dulles International Airport bound for Los Angeles. Of its 6 crew members and 58 passengers, five were terrorists. At 8:42, United Airlines Flight 93 took off from Newark Airport near New York bound for San Francisco. Of its 7 crew members and 37 passengers, four were terrorists.

Going back a little, at 8:37 Boston air traffic control contacted the U.S. Air Force, and this was the first the military learned of the hijacking. However, because the hijackers had turned off the aircraft's secondary radar, the military reportedly struggled to obtain accurate information about the plane. At 8:46, an order was issued to scramble fighter jets. Yet the commanders on the ground did not even know in which direction to send them. As a result, the fighters could do nothing but hold in airspace near New York.

About 40 seconds later, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. All passengers were killed instantly. Everyone above the 91st floor at that moment was trapped.

Around the same time, the hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 175 also made their move. Both pilots were killed, and the plane was quickly taken over, just as Flight 11 had been. Even as of 8:53, the scrambled fighters were unaware of two things: that Flight 11 had crashed into the World Trade Center, and that Flight 175 had been hijacked and was heading toward New York. By this time, the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 had also begun. Because Flight 77 had already reached airspace over Indiana in the Midwest, the controller handling it reportedly had no idea what was happening in New York.

At 9:03, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at about 940 km/h. Many people, including all of the passengers, were killed in an instant.

At 9:28, the hijacking of the last plane, United Airlines Flight 93, began. At 9:37, American Airlines Flight 77, which had been hijacked over Indiana, crashed into the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, commonly known as the Pentagon. It struck at about 850 km/h, killing everyone on board and 125 Pentagon employees. One minute earlier, the Air Force had received a report of an unidentified aircraft near the White House and had dispatched fighters. But they reportedly did not make it in time.

According to the video, United Airlines Flight 93 met a somewhat different end from the other three planes. Through emergency phone calls to family members and others, the crew and passengers learned that coordinated terrorist attacks were underway. These calls also told them that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. In response, at 9:57, an effort to retake the plane began, led mainly by the passengers.

The terrorist acting as pilot tried to stop them by violently rocking the plane. Even so, the passengers did not give up. Eventually the hijackers, perhaps believing the cockpit door was about to be broken through, deliberately crashed the plane. It came down on an open field in Pennsylvania with no buildings around. The video says it is still unknown where the terrorists intended to crash this plane.

Information on the authorities' side was in disarray. At 10:18, then–Vice President Cheney contacted President Bush and confirmed authorization to shoot down hijacked aircraft if necessary. This order was formally relayed to the fighters as rules of engagement at 10:31. Even at this point, however, the authorities did not know that Flight 93 had already crashed and believed it was still in the air.

Going back in time, at 9:59 the South Tower, the second to be hit, collapsed all at once. About 30 minutes later, the North Tower, the first to be hit, also collapsed. In addition to those who could not escape in time, many people were caught in the collapse. The video puts the death toll at 2,977. In addition, huge amounts of dust containing asbestos were scattered. The video reports that the number of victims of indirect health effects is estimated to be even higher.

In later years, many conspiracy theories circulated about the attacks. The one the video takes up as commonly heard is the claim that the World Trade Center was brought down not by the plane impacts but by bombs planted in advance. Two points are often cited as evidence. One is that jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt the steel supporting the building's structure. The other is that the collapse looked like free fall.

In response, the video says that the way the buildings collapsed can be fully explained scientifically. Its position is that, if anything, it supports the view that the plane impacts were the cause. It is true that jet fuel burns at about 1,000 degrees and that the melting point of steel is generally over 1,400 degrees. But according to the video, steel is known to lose strength sharply from around 300 degrees. When the floors with weakened steel gave way, the portion above came down in what was almost free fall. The floors below could not withstand that impact and weight, and the buildings collapsed in a chain reaction. This is how the video explains it.

So why were the World Trade Center and the Pentagon targeted? According to the video, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks, cited several reasons for the terrorism: U.S. support for Israel, the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and the sanctions on Iraq. The video speculates that bin Laden may have sought to demonstrate his worldview to the world by attacking facilities that symbolized America's economy and national defense. It then states plainly that these can never be reasons that justify terrorism that takes the lives of large numbers of ordinary civilians.

At the same time, the video points out that this background can hardly be said to have been resolved even now. As an example, it cites the military clash between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other in March 2026. Many U.S. troops are stationed in neighboring countries in the Middle East, and many countries, such as Iran and Syria, are or have been under economic sanctions. The video says it is fair to say that the soil in which extremist ideologies like al-Qaeda's can grow still remains. Moreover, today such ideologies can be spread widely and quickly over the internet.

The video says that 9/11 was neither the beginning nor the end of terrorism. It closes with two questions. Why did the 2,977 people who died that day have to have their lives so senselessly taken? And has humanity learned from tragedy and built a new world?