Bart Hamilton

It is because of this beautiful young lady we learned who perpetuated this evil on our country. I hope her two young children have grown up to know what a hero their Mama was💔 "We're flying low. We're flying very, very low." Those were the last words ground control heard from 35-year-old Amy Sweeney. She spent her final moments making sure the world knew the truth. Twenty-five years ago this morning, Madeline Amy Sweeney was not supposed to be at work. She was a part-time flight attendant who kept a light schedule so she could be home with her kids. Her daughter Anna was five and had just started kindergarten. Her son was younger still. But when a colleague fell ill, Amy did what she always did. She stepped up and took the shift. That simple act of generosity placed her aboard American Airlines Flight 11, departing Boston for Los Angeles. At 7:15 a.m., before the plane left the gate, Amy called her husband Mike from the cabin. He later said that was unusual for her. She was feeling low about missing the chance to see Anna off to school that morning. Mike told her not to worry. There would be plenty of mornings ahead to walk their kids to the bus. Flight 11 took off at 7:59 a.m. with 81 passengers on board. About 15 minutes later, five terrorists hijacked the aircraft. As panic and violence consumed the cabin, Amy Sweeney chose extraordinary courage over terror. She picked up an onboard phone, dialed American Airlines Flight Services at Boston Logan Airport, and reached manager Michael Woodward. He was a friend, and he knew her voice. The first thing she told him was to listen very carefully, because her plane had been hijacked. Calmly, methodically, and under unimaginable pressure, Amy gave ground control the very first intelligence report of the day. She reported that the flight was hijacked. She confirmed two flight attendants had been stabbed and a passenger was critically injured. The passenger was a man in business class whose throat had been cut. She reported a bomb threat in the cockpit. One of the hijackers had shown her a device with red and yellow wires. She relayed the exact seat numbers of the hijackers, providing critical evidence for federal investigators. She named seats 8D, 8G, and 10B. Woodward's team pulled those seats up in the reservation system while she was still on the line. The name in seat 8D was Mohamed Atta. Within hours, the FBI knew who had led the attack, and Amy Sweeney was the reason. Woodward later said she spoke very calmly and very quickly, the way a professional does when there is no time to waste. She told him one hijacker spoke excellent English and another spoke almost none. She told him the hijackers had gotten into the cockpit and she did not know how. She told him that passengers in coach still believed there was a medical emergency up front. Amy had been flying with American for more than a decade, and every bit of that training showed. Alongside fellow flight attendant Betty Ong, who stayed on her own line for 23 minutes, Amy became the eyes and ears of a nation in its darkest hour. Betty's call helped lead the FAA to ground every plane in America for the first time in our history. Amy's call helped the FBI put names and faces to the men who did this. The two of them, working the same cabin with no weapons and no help coming, gave our country the truth before the rest of us knew anything was wrong. She stayed on the phone as the aircraft sped toward New York City. She told Woodward that something was wrong and that the plane was in a rapid descent. Near the end of the call, Woodward asked her to look outside and determine where they were. Looking through the window at the approaching city skyline, her final reported words were: "I see water. I see buildings. We're flying low. We're flying very, very low." At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.