Late Afternoon September 11, 2001: Boeing 757 Permitted to Fly FBI Agents from San Francisco to Washington

A Boeing 757 takes off from San Francisco, California, to transport a group of FBI agents to Washington, DC. United Airlines Flight 8811 is carrying 75 FBI agents and 14,000 pounds of equipment across the US. [Spencer, 2008, pp. 279] The agents are presumably the members of an anti-terrorist task force who were reported to be “out of place” at the time of the terrorist attacks, away from Washington in Monterey, California, where they had been participating in a training exercise (see 10:03 a.m. September 11, 2001). [NBC 4, 9/11/2001; USA Today, 9/11/2001] Flight 8811 has received approval to take off from NORAD headquarters. It is one of the first non-military aircraft to be permitted to take off since NORAD implemented a limited version of a plan called “SCATANA,” which gave the military control over US airspace (see (11:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001). After taking off, the plane’s pilot, Captain Barry Nance, is cleared “direct” across the country. As he flies to Washington, Nance hears just three other aircraft over the radio, all of them military fighter jets. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; Spencer, 2008, pp. 279] Flight 8811 reaches Washington just after midnight and lands at Reagan National Airport. [Spencer, 2008, pp. 282; Lynn Spencer, 2008]