Flight 11
On September 11, 2001, Sweeney was asked by American Airlines to take an extra shift, because the other crew member who was assigned to the position was ill. Normally, she would only work on weekends.
| "I see water. I see buildings. I see buildings! We are flying low. We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low. Oh my God we are flying way too low. Oh my God!" (American 11 crashes) |
| -- Sweeney's last words on the inflight call with American Airlines manager Michael Woodward. |
During the hijacking, she used an airphone to call American Airlines flight operations center. She reached an operator and then Michael Woodward, the manager on duty who was also a friend for the previous decade. She relayed information about the hijackers' seats, and described them as Middle Easterners. She also reported that two flight attendants, the pilots, and a first class passenger had been stabbed. She reported that the hijackers had jammed their way into the cockpit and that there was mace in the first class cabin, and how they struggled to breathe. She also stated that the cockpit was not answering their phone. During the last minutes of the call, she said that the aircraft was flying erratically and that they were descending very rapidly.
Sweeney was 34 years old when she was killed. She had been a flight attendant for twelve years. She was survived by a husband and two children, ages 4 and 6 at the time. They lived in Acton, Massachusetts.
Read more about this topic: Madeline Amy Sweeney
Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“Fear of error which everything recalls to me at every moment of the flight of my ideas, this mania for control, makes men prefer reason’s imagination to the imagination of the senses. And yet it is always the imagination alone which is at work.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)