American Airlines Flight 11 — 9/11 hijacked passenger flight, hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center
The deadliest of the four 9/11 hijackings, Flight 11 was the first aircraft to strike the World Trade Center, killing all 92 aboard and over 1,000 in the North Tower.
Key Facts
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767-200ER
- Passengers and crew aboard
- 92
- Impact time (local)
- 08:46
- Floors struck
- 93 through 99, North Tower
- North Tower collapse time
- 10:28
- Hijackers
- 5 al-Qaeda operatives, led by Mohamed Atta
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Five al-Qaeda terrorists boarded American Airlines Flight 11, a scheduled transcontinental service from Boston Logan to Los Angeles. Shortly after takeoff at 07:59, they overpowered flight attendants and a passenger, forced their way into the cockpit, and placed lead hijacker Mohamed Atta at the controls as part of the coordinated September 11 attacks.
At 08:46 local time on September 11, 2001, Atta deliberately crashed the Boeing 767-200ER into floors 93 through 99 of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. All 92 people aboard were killed instantly, and the resulting impact and fires trapped and killed more than one thousand people in the upper stories of the building.
The fires ignited by the crash caused the North Tower to collapse at 10:28, causing hundreds of additional deaths. Flight 11's strike was the deadliest single act of terrorism in recorded history and the deadliest plane crash of all time in terms of combined plane and ground fatalities, and it triggered the broader sequence of events that defined the global response to the September 11 attacks.