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“What’s going on, Betty?” Betty, talk to me. Betty, are you there? Betty?
Nydia Gonzalez, COO of American Airlines (AA) this morning of September 11, 2001, knew something bad had happened on the other side of the line.
For over 20 minutes he was talking to Betty ong, one of the hostesses of flight AA11 between Boston and Los Angeles, the first of the two which, 20 years ago, would end up crashing into the World Trade Center in New York.
Ong (1956-2001), originally from San Francisco of Chinese descent, had been working in the industry for over 10 years and that day, with his ground call, He was the first person to alert authorities to the hijackings.
“The cockpit is not responding. Someone was stabbed in business class and I think they gassed because we can’t breathe. I don’t know. It seems to me that they kidnap us“He said at the start of his communication, around 8:20 am.
Seven minutes earlier, the pilot’s last contact with the control tower had taken place.
At that time, the air operators noticed that something was wrong with the trajectory of the plane and at the same time that Ong called, they saw that the plane had radically deviated from its path.
Four minutes later, while the flight attendant was still talking on the ground, the plane turned 100 degrees south, confirming the suspicion that it had been hijacked and was on its way to New York.
Meanwhile, in the phone conversation, anxiety and bewilderment seemed to take hold.
A woman who answered the call first and an AA official who added to the conversation seemed unsure of what to do. Time and time again, they asked the flight attendant for details like where she was, what her flight number was or what seat she was in.
Ong confidently answered and repeated that something very strange was happening on the plane.
“My name is Betty Ong. I’m number 3 on flight 11. And IThe cabin does not answer its phone, someone was stabbed in business class and we can’t breathe in business class, ”he hears her say.
A few minutes later, she asked the ground to wait: someone was heading towards where she was.
“Someone’s coming from business class. Wait a second, they’re coming back …”.
Communication, however, is not cut off.
The last conversation
Ong goes back to speaking and repeats that they cannot enter the cockpit, it seems they took it and the pilot was also stabbed.
He asks people on the ground if they have been able to communicate with the cabin.
“I think the men are up there (in the cabin). They may have sneaked in there. No one can call the cabin. We can’t even get in,” he said.
Then she asks, almost desperate: “Is anyone still here?“.
They say yes.
That’s when Nydia Gonzalez joins the call.
He asks Ong again who he was, what the flight was, where he was going … then if they tried to communicate with anyone else.
“No. Someone call a doctor and we can’t find a doctor“, Ong replies.
It was the last part of the recording with the voice of the flight attendant that was performed in the United States before the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks.
But Ong’s call with the land continued, and testimony for the minutes that followed came in an even more agonizing way: through the voice of Gonzalez, who communicated to the American hotline. Airlines what he said for the other phone to the flight attendant.
The last seconds
When they call the emergency line, Gonzalez has to repeat the same flight details and even has to repeat his name and spell his last name before he can continue to say what’s going on.
The emergency person puts you on hold while you contact air traffic control.
“I’m still confident, okay, Betty? You are doing a great job, keep calm. Okay? ”Nydia Gonzalez says to the flight attendant.
Then, through Gonzalez’s voice, we learn that Ong tells him that apparently economy class passengers aren’t clear on what’s going on.
It was then that they questioned him about the attackers.
“Hi Betty, do you have any information on the gentlemen, the men in the cockpit with the pilots?” Were they in first class?
Then Gonzalez repeats what the flight attendant replies: “They were sitting in (seats) 2A and 2B“.
Five Islamic extremists were on board, including Mohammad Atta, the group’s leader, who allegedly took over as the pilot at some point during the hijacking and flew the plane to the first tower of the World Trade Center.
Shortly before impact, in the call, the emergency services agent said that the hijackers turned off the plane’s transponder and that is why they could no longer record the altitude. from the plane.
However, a radar hints that something is about to happen: “It seems to be going down,” the man said.
It’s shortly after that Nydia asks Betty what’s going on, if she’s there … But she doesn’t have an answer.
“It looks like … it looks like we’ve lost him …”, said Gonzalez.
Later, Nydia will say the last thing she heard from the other side.
Apparently Betty told her: “Pray for us.”
“I think about her every day”
“I have a picture of her on my desk. I see her every day. I think of her every day,” Harry Ong Jr., Betty’s older brother, recently told CBS.
As he recounted, Betty, the youngest of four siblings, he liked being a flight attendant. They grew up without a lot of money, and their jobs allowed them to travel to places they only dreamed of when they were kids.
Betty was on Flight 11 to earn extra cash for an upcoming trip to Hawaii with her sister. As she was not on her normal flight, the 45-year-old woman was assigned to the back of the plane instead of the first and business class, where the hijackers were located. This allowed him to make the ground roll call.
Ong Jr. said her father waited for Betty to come home until the day she died in 2007.
“I was always watching TV, news channels, hoping Betty came home and was okay,” he said.
Betty’s family has preserved their name and heritage by creating a foundation to fund programs for youth and seniors at a San Francisco Chinatown recreation center named after the flight attendant.
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