Aside from other factors, one that surely worked to the advantage of the 9/11 hijackers was that each of the four flights they caught on that fateful day was carrying significantly less than a full passenger load. Again we have what appears to be little short of a miraculous concatenation of timing and other circumstances:

 

Since the four planes, like the World Trade Center, were mercifully not full to capacity, casualties ultimately proved less than they might otherwise have. On the other hand, the hijackers also had fewer passengers to overpower or keep under control, and there was less passenger weight to use up fuel. Magically, the flight that carried four hijackers rather than five -- United Airlines flight 93 – was the flight that also carried even fewer passengers than the other flights. (Paradoxically that was the flight that the passengers brought down using additional reaction time and communications with the ground.)

 

Here are the passenger numbers, or what the airline industry calls load factor, for the four flights:

American Airlines flight 11, a Boeing 767-223ER with capacity of 165 according to American Airlines, had 76 passengers, 11 crew members, and the 5 hijackers. United Airlines flight 175, a Boeing 767-222 with the same capacity, had 51 passengers, 9 crew and 5 hijackers. American flight 77, a Boeing 757 with capacity of 180-188, carried 53 passengers, 6 crew, and 5 hijackers. United flight 93, another Boeing 757, carried 33 passengers, 7 crew and the 4 hijackers.

 

These are load factors of about 57% for AA flight 11, 33% for UAL flight 175, 32% for AA 77, and 20% for UAL 93 -- pretty low compared to the industry average for the period (see next graf). The kicker is that these are the percentages with the hijackers counted among the passengers. Not counting the hijackers, the load factors were 46% for AA flight 11, 30% for UAL flight 175, 29% for AA flight 77, and 18% for UAL flight 93.

 

Load factor being a very big deal for airlines, the industry press tends to bristle with statistics and comparisons. Load factor in U.S. airlines was 70% in the 4th quarter of

2000, for example, and was down to 61% in the 4th quarter of 2001. In other words, load factor diminished by 9/11 was still significantly higher than the percentages aboard the four hijacked flights. Generally the numbers had been running 70% - 75% during the year. Now recall that we have no narratives of the hijackers trying to get on some flight and having to take another instead on 9/11: they took the ones they meant – or were meant – to take. Thus on a day with around 4,000 commercial airliners aloft in the U.S., all 19 of the skyjackers got the seats they wanted,* literally no questions asked, on each of those four flights, all flying at less than 50% capacity.

 

So one question, although not raised in the 9/11 Commission Report, is whether any other 757s and 767s scheduled for takeoff that morning carried an equally light passenger load for any reason.

 

A rigorous discussion of passenger load would examine the four planes fully in context, to determine reliably whether the light passenger load on these flights was anomalous and if so, how anomalous it was. The 9/11 Commission was alert to questions suggested by load factor and raised the topic on the first page of its final Report as well as in some notes to Chapter 1, interviewing witnesses including several individuals who bought tickets/made reservations and then did not fly.

 

Calendar and weather are partly chance; it was chance of the calendar that “911,” perennial date of military operations and simulations, fell in 2001 on a Tuesday,

generally one of the lighter days of the week for domestic passenger flight. That the weather was beautifully clear and conducive to flying in most parts of the country on September 11 was also chance.

 

But it is not a given that the comparatively light passenger load on the four jumbo jets to be hijacked from three U.S. airports that day was entirely chance. On these points, for some reason the Commission Report is terse. The Commission’s Note 40 to Chapter 1 states, “The 56 passengers represented a load factor of 33.33 percent of the airplane's seating capacity of 168, below the 49.22 percent for Flight 175 on Tuesdays in the three-month period prior to September 11, 2001. See UAL report, Flight 175 BOS-LAX Load Factors, undated (from June 1, 2001, to Sept. 11, 2001). Nine passengers holding reservations for Flight 175 did not show for the flight. They were interviewed and cleared by the FBI. FAA report, "Executive Summary," Sept. 12, 2001; FAA report, "Executive Summary, Chronology of a Multiple Hijacking Crisis, September 11, 2001," Sept. 17, 2001; UAL record, Flight 175 ACARS report, Sept. 11, 2001; UAL record, Flight 175 Flight Data Recap, Sept. 11, 2001.”

 

Due mention of flight 175, yes, but no mention of the even lower load factors on two other flights. Did the documents provided to the Commission include the same kind of information for United flight 93? Or for any of the other three jets hijacked that day?

 

These are not light questions, even though for now they are only a small part of an inquiry and part of what presumably will be process of elimination. All investigations and research are partly process of elimination, if they’re genuine. But the statement that the skyjackers got the seats they wanted, above, is not persiflage. According to the 9/11 Commission’s final report, Atta, al-Omari and al-Suqami had business class seats near the cockpit on AA flight 11, with the al-Shehri brothers adjacent, and together, in first class. All five hijackers on UAL flight 175 were also optimally positioned near the front of the plane. On AA flight 77, Hani Hanjour, who piloted the plane into the Pentagon,

was seated in first class at 1B, joined by two al-Hazmi brothers in first class and backed up by the two other skyjackers including Khalid al-Mihdhar – he of the CIA watch list -- a few rows farther back. All four skyjackers on UAL 93 also had first class seats near the cockpit.

 

And by what really does seem like a miracle in reverse, hijacker Satam al-Suqami on AA flight 11 was seated in 10B – right behind passenger Daniel Lewin, an Israeli counter-terrorism expert, in 9B, where he could and apparently did take out Lewin when the hijacking commenced.