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On 9/11 reports there were short-lived reports of a plane crash near the Kentucky/ Ohio border. Why? When Flight 77 was hijacked, the plane's transponder was turned off and it changed course. The air traffic controller handling the flight wasn't aware of the other hijackings, and thought it may have suffered electrical or mechanical problems, and crashed (see Losing Flight 77). Pamela Freni fills in what happened next:
In what was to be one of the few major communication errors of the day, when the Indianapolis ARTCC supervisor called the regional operations center to report the loss of communication with AA77, a flight service station employee picked up the communication and called the Ashland, Kentucky, police to report a confirmed crash. The ARTCC controller had noted the last know nposition of AA77, near the Ohio/ Kentucky border. This became part of the report. As other FAA personnel were trying to determine whether any unidentified crashes had been reported to the local police, Indianapolis ARTCC personnel contacted the same police office asking for information on any crashes. The local police, using the flight service station report as an actual accident, confirmed a crash that never happened, causing mass confusion. A state helicopter was dispatched to the plane's last coordinates, only there wasn't any downed airplane. Instead of crashing, the plane was hijacked, the transponder turned off, and the plane had doubled back to Washington. Time had been lost in all the confusion and the plane had completely disappeared in the area with only secondary radar coverage.
Pamela Freni, Ground Stop