American Airlines Flight 11 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight in the United States departing from Boston's Logan International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport. The flight was hijacked by a team of five
al-Qaeda terrorists and deliberately crashed into the North Tower of the
World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. Fifteen minutes into the flight, the hijackers injured at least three people, forcefully breached the cockpit, and overpowered the pilot and first officer.
Mohamed Atta, who was trained as a pilot, took over the controls. Air traffic controllers noticed the flight was in distress when the crew stopped responding to them. They realized the flight had been hijacked when Atta mistakenly transmitted announcements to air traffic control. On board, two flight attendants contacted American Airlines, and provided information about the hijackers and injuries to passengers and crew. The aircraft crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 08:46 local time (EDT), with the impact killing all 92 people aboard, including the hijackers. Numerous people in the streets witnessed the collision, and Jules Naudet captured the impact on video. News agencies began to report on the incident soon after and speculated that the crash had been an accident. The impact and subsequent fire caused the North Tower to collapse, which resulted in thousands of additional casualties. During the rescue and recovery effort at the World Trade Center site, workers recovered and identified dozens of remains from Flight 11 victims, but many other body fragments could not be identified.
