911 Flight Attendant Remained Calm & Informative During Hijacking

At 8:19 a.m. on September 11, 2001, Madeline Amy Sweeney was trapped inside a hijacked airplane.

But while everything around her was falling apart, she did something extraordinary.
She started identifying the men who had taken over the plane.

Sweeney was a 35-year-old American Airlines flight attendant aboard Flight 11, flying from Boston to Los Angeles.

Shortly after takeoff, the nightmare began. Passengers were injured. Flight attendants had been attacked. The cockpit stopped responding. The plane had been hijacked.

Sweeney managed to reach American Airlines operations through an Airfone. On the other end was supervisor Michael Woodward. Then she began giving him information. Not guesses.
Details. She described the hijackers. She gave their seat numbers. She reported that two flight attendants had been injured. She told him a passenger had been stabbed.

As the aircraft continued toward New York, Sweeney kept talking.
Michael Woodward later remembered how remarkably calm she sounded.

While trapped inside a hijacked aircraft, Madeline Sweeney carefully described the people responsible. Among the names she helped identify was Mohamed Atta.

She couldn’t escape the plane. She couldn’t regain control of it. But she understood that the information she had could matter. So she kept reporting. Minute after minute.

At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Everyone aboard was killed.

Madeline Amy Sweeney was 35 years old. She left behind her husband and two young children. Her son was four. Her daughter was seven. But during her final minutes, she didn’t have the chance to protect herself.
Instead, she helped authorities understand who had taken control of the first plane used in the attacks.

Madeline Amy Sweeney couldn’t stop the hijacking. She couldn’t save Flight 11. But while trapped inside the plane, she made sure the world would know exactly who had taken it.