Word: cockpit
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That gave investigators a heads-up that something had gone terribly wrong, but there were plenty of other clues. Even before the smoke had cleared, it was obvious that the culprits knew their way around a Boeing cockpit--and all the security weaknesses in the U.S. civil aviation system. The enemy had chosen the quietest day of the week for the operation, when there would be fewer passengers to subdue; they had boarded westbound transcontinental flights--planes fully loaded with fuel. They were armed with knives and box cutters, had gained access to the cockpits and herded everyone...
...pilots heard the controllers say something about a hijacking. A pilot from another plane asked ATC, "What company?", meaning what airline was involved. "Standby" came the response from ATC. Then a few seconds of suspense - and fear. United is the only airline in the U.S. that pipes the cockpit's radio transmissions through to its inflight audio system via channel nine. The flight attendants on the United plane called through the inflight phone into the cockpit to tell the pilot that a passenger had been listening on channel 9 and wanted to know what was going...
...Thousands of pilots rapidly began dialing up the operation centers of their airlines via the airborne communication systems that allow crew to contact the ground with e-mail or voice systems. Pilots were informed that there had been terrorist attacks, were instructed to deny all access to the cockpit and get the plane down as quickly as possible. In one cockpit, a pilot checked that the door was locked. Then he made sure that the 'crash axe' that is carried in all cockpits was in place...
...very, very different in these rooms from Cleveland to Washington to Boston. Instead of the normal 'data blocks', controllers were virtually blind in trying to track at least one of the planes, and perhaps as many as all four. One or more had 'lost' their transponders: the onboard cockpit device that sends the plane's critical information to the ATC system. Or more worrying, someone had known enough to turn them off. "Those planes were essentially invisible," says one veteran controller. "A controller tracking that plane would not be sure of where it actually...
...That gave investigators a heads-up that something had gone terribly wrong, but there were plenty of other clues. Even before the smoke had cleared, it was obvious that the culprits knew their way around a Boeing cockpit--and all the security weaknesses in the U.S. civil aviation system. The enemy had chosen the quietest day of the week for the operation, when there would be fewer passengers to subdue; they had boarded westbound transcontinental flights--planes fully loaded with fuel. They were armed with knives and box cutters, had gained access to the cockpits and herded everyone...