‘9/11: The Fifth Airplane,’ Passengers Argue with Flight Attendants to Take Off

A United 767 scheduled to take off from JFK Airport on September 11, 2001, might have been the fifth aircraft focused by hijackers … this based on the flight attendants and the pilot on that aircraft. TMZ will current the story of United 23 Monday on FOX at 9 PM ET.

TMZ has carried out a 6-month investigation into United Flight 23 — scheduled to depart JFK at 9 AM … sure for Los Angeles. We interviewed 3 flight attendants, the pilot, the United dispatcher, a member of the 9/11 Fee and others a couple of sequence of suspicious actions on the aircraft … suspicious sufficient for the FBI to get entangled.

4 passengers in top quality aroused suspicion shortly after they boarded. The flight attendants say one of many passengers was a person disguised as a lady. The purser [first class flight attendant] tells us these passengers didn’t eat meat, and there have been solely 2 fruit plates within the galley. She wished to get extra fruit plates so the passengers might eat, and it triggered a heated argument … with one of many passengers insisting, “We don’t wish to eat. We do not want meals. We wish to take off … We simply wish to go.”

There have been different causes the flight attendants had been suspicious of the 4 passengers in first, together with 2 others in enterprise class.

The aircraft taxied to the runway and was near taking off when the World Commerce Middle was hit and the airport shut down. United 23 went again to the gate and was evacuated — the aircraft was empty and locked. Twenty minutes later, folks on the bottom noticed 2 uniformed folks operating in United 23’s passenger cabin. Authorities got here a short while later, opened the door and located the hatch — that led from the stomach of the aircraft to the cabin — was open.

The pilot believes these 2 folks could have been there to take away weapons or different incriminating proof. We do not know what was faraway from Flight 23, however we do know somebody put field cutters within the first-class seat pockets within the aircraft parked subsequent to United 23 … a aircraft that was not scheduled to take off at the moment. The United 23 pilot believes these boxcutters had been meant to be on his flight however somebody confused the two planes.

The FBI interviewed the flight attendants later that day and even took them to a lineup on the Port Authority to see if they might ID the 4 passengers.