Like many people, Chris Tucker remembers September 11, 2001, like it was yesterday. Unlike many people, Chris didn’t watch the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on television. He was in an air traffic control center trying to keep the skies calm and air traffic safe while two hijacked airplanes sped to downtown Manhattan.
Chris will present his harrowing tale on the 17th anniversary of 9/11 on Tuesday, September 11, 2018, at the EAA Aviation Museum, starting at 7 p.m.
Having started his career at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center in 1989, Chris was a veteran air traffic controller by 2001. “I was one of the good [air traffic controllers],” Chris said. “That sounds a little egotistical, but when you’re a controller, you have to wear your ego on your sleeve. You have to know that you’re capable of doing the job otherwise you can’t do it.”
Chris’ ability to do his job was tested like never before on September 11, 2001 — a day that changed the course of American history.
“I remember distinctly what a beautiful day it was,” Chris said of 9/11. “I remember stopping on the way to work to look at the sky. It was a remarkably blue sky. Incredibly clear.”
That morning, Chris was working a departure sector that routinely had crossing traffic and as a result, he got a bit busy. In the midst of that, Chris had a departing aircraft heading to Charlotte that wanted to climb to a higher altitude and needed clearance. Chris asked his assistant controller to point the aircraft out to the controller working that altitude sector, so he could climb him up. Chris’ assistant controller dialed up the other controller and was told that he had a hijacked airplane and couldn’t take on another one. As the controller working that sector had a flair for the dramatic, Chris’ assistant controller sarcastically responded back to Chris, “He says he’s got a hijacked airplane.” While Chris initially didn’t believe the claim, that exchange signaled the start of what would be a tragically chaotic day for him and the rest of the New York Center controllers.
“We soon discovered the hijacked airplane was real,” Chris said referring to American Airlines Flight 11. “The chief of the facility ended up walking into the area with a phone in each ear and the deputy on his arm. About this time, United Airlines Flight 175 checks in on the frequency and notified us of a suspicious transmission [on American 11]. … United 175 is telling us this and it turns out he’s telling us this only moments before their plane gets hijacked.”
While Chris and the rest of the controllers were attempting to figure out what was happening with American 11, they were informed of an “intruder” — a target not paired to a flight plan. They soon realized it was likely United 175.
During this time, American 11 disappeared from New York Center radar over lower Manhattan. “It didn’t occur to us, not even in our wildest dreams, that the guy had crashed, let alone crashed where he did,” Chris said. “A lot of things are happening simultaneously now and it gets very confusing to us very quickly.”
Meanwhile, United 175 had started to turn southbound and was descending. Although Chris and his fellow controllers knew something was obviously wrong, they didn’t fully believe that the airplane had been hijacked. But this diversion, regardless of the reason behind it, soon started to cause problems with other airplanes in the sky. With United 175 nearing two airplanes departing New York, operated by Delta Air Lines and US Airways, Chris started to wonder what instructions to give the pilots because he was unsure what 175’s intentions were. As the hijacked airplane got closer and closer, Chris told the two airplanes to immediately turn left to avoid a potential midair collision. The maneuver worked, though only by a couple of miles for each airplane. Following that near potential disaster, United 175 continued to descend on lower Manhattan.
“We started to speculate that he was going to Newark,” Chris said. “One of the more experienced controllers, said ‘No, he’s going too fast and coming down too fast. This guy’s going in.’ He looked at the scope and said ‘Seven or eight more hits and he’s going in.’ The public knows a ‘hit’ as a ‘blip.’ We’re watching him descend, staring actually. Jimmy, the more experienced controller, is counting now. Three more hits. Two more hits. One more. That’s it — he’s gone. And the target disappeared. At that point, he was coming down between 5,000 and 8,000 feet a minute, ridiculously fast.”
Over the next few hours, Chris and the other controllers were put in a conference room and fed information about what was happening, including news on the other two aircraft hijackings and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers later in the day. The skies were cleared of airplanes within a few hours of the attacks.
“Within the building there was a mixture of two general attitudes after the attacks,” Chris explained. “The first was utter disbelief and with that came a tremendous amount of fear. The other attitude was that we wanted blood and we wanted it now. We [were] already thinking in those terms that morning. The tension was insane. The whole building was filled with this atmosphere that went back and forth between real fear and the desire for vengeance.”
While 9/11 was a terrible moment in U.S. history, causing thousands of deaths and directly leading to the American war in Afghanistan, Chris did have one positive memorable experience that came from it. About a year after the attacks, Chris was interviewed by a reporter from the Hartford Courant in Hartford, Connecticut, about 9/11. A couple of days after the article was published, Chris was again contacted by the reporter who told him that a reader had called and said he was a passenger on Delta Flight 2315, the airplane that had the first near midair collision with United 175.
“The guy called me and we talked on the phone for two hours and he thanked me for saving his life,” Chris said. “We talked about our families and everything. That was really a watershed moment for me. … People will sometimes comment after they’ve heard the story ‘Well, if you had let those two airplanes hit, things would have been different.’ My job as a controller is to keep airplanes apart. Under no circumstances would I conceive of the possibility of letting two airplanes get too close together. My job is to protect the people in the air.”