background image
Between 6:45 and 7:40,Atta and Omari, along with Satam al Suqami,Wail
al Shehri, and Waleed al Shehri, checked in and boarded American Airlines
Flight 11, bound for Los Angeles.The flight was scheduled to depart at 7:45.
4
In another Logan terminal, Shehhi, joined by Fayez Banihammad, Mohand
al Shehri, Ahmed al Ghamdi, and Hamza al Ghamdi, checked in for United
Airlines Flight 175, also bound for Los Angeles.A couple of Shehhi's colleagues
were obviously unused to travel; according to the United ticket agent, they had
trouble understanding the standard security questions, and she had to go over
them slowly until they gave the routine, reassuring answers.
5
Their flight was
scheduled to depart at 8:00.
The security checkpoints through which passengers, including Atta and his
colleagues, gained access to the American 11 gate were operated by Globe
Security under a contract with American Airlines. In a different terminal, the
single checkpoint through which passengers for United 175 passed was con-
trolled by United Airlines, which had contracted with Huntleigh USA to per-
form the screening.
6
In passing through these checkpoints, each of the hijackers would have been
screened by a walk-through metal detector calibrated to detect items with at
least the metal content of a .22-caliber handgun. Anyone who might have set
off that detector would have been screened with a hand wand--a procedure
requiring the screener to identify the metal item or items that caused the alarm.
In addition, an X-ray machine would have screened the hijackers' carry-on
belongings.The screening was in place to identify and confiscate weapons and
other items prohibited from being carried onto a commercial flight.
7
None of
the checkpoint supervisors recalled the hijackers or reported anything suspi-
cious regarding their screening.
8
While Atta had been selected by CAPPS in Portland, three members of his
hijacking team--Suqami,Wail al Shehri, and Waleed al Shehri--were selected
in Boston.Their selection affected only the handling of their checked bags, not
their screening at the checkpoint. All five men cleared the checkpoint and
made their way to the gate for American 11. Atta, Omari, and Suqami took
their seats in business class (seats 8D, 8G, and 10B, respectively). The Shehri
brothers had adjacent seats in row 2 (Wail in 2A, Waleed in 2B), in the first-
class cabin. They boarded American 11 between 7:31 and 7:40. The aircraft
pushed back from the gate at 7:40.
9
Shehhi and his team, none of whom had been selected by CAPPS, boarded
United 175 between 7:23 and 7:28 (Banihammad in 2A, Shehri in 2B, Shehhi
in 6C, Hamza al Ghamdi in 9C, and Ahmed al Ghamdi in 9D).Their aircraft
pushed back from the gate just before 8:00.
10
Washington Dulles: American 77.
Hundreds of miles southwest of Boston,
at Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.,
five more men were preparing to take their early morning flight.At 7:15, a pair
2
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
Final1-4.4pp 7/17/04 9:12 AM Page 2