The Mysterious United Airlines "Flight 177" On 9/11

By Mark Conlon

On 9/11, Mark Randol was manager of the Civil Aviation Security Field Office (CASFO) in Washington, DC, a subdivision of the FAA. He reported to the Commission.

By 9:25 a.m. Marcus Arroyo (Regional manager) called to report several hijackings, including AAL77, UAL 175 and UAL 177.

He made it clear that this was a terrorist act. Randol then immediately tasked his staff to find out everything they could about the flights. Randol remembers that the whole day was hectic and by 9:45 a.m. they had identified that AAL 77 had departed from Dulles, but they could not confirm whether it had been hijacked, while they discovered that UAL177 was being held at the gate in Boston.

The BUREAU OF TRANSPORTATION STATISTICS (BTS) database tells us that UAL 177 was scheduled to depart at 6:55 p.m. from Boston, destination Los Angeles.

This raises two important questions:

1.     Why was it reported hijacked?
2.     Why was it reported "held at the gate" if its departure was only in the evening?

Most remarkably, the hijacking of United 177 was reported at 9:25 a.m. two minutes after Ed Ballinger, United flight dispatcher, sent the last message to 'Flight 175' while it was over Pittsburgh.

Research Source: WoodyBox: http://911woodybox.blogspot.com/2009/11/mysterious-united-177-from-boston.html