The Fifth Plane,’ Passengers Argue with Flight Attendants to Take Off

A United 767 scheduled to take off from JFK Airport on September 11, 2001, may have been the fifth airplane focused by hijackers … this in response to the flight attendants and the pilot on that airplane. TMZ will current the story of United 23 Monday on FOX at 9 PM ET.

TMZ has performed a 6-month investigation into United Flight 23 — scheduled to go away JFK at 9 AM … certain for Los Angeles. We interviewed 3 flight attendants, the pilot, the United dispatcher, a member of the 9/11 Commission and others a few sequence of suspicious actions on the airplane … suspicious sufficient for the FBI to get entangled.

Four passengers in top quality aroused suspicion shortly after they boarded. The flight attendants say one of many passengers was a person disguised as a girl. The purser [first class flight attendant] tells us these passengers didn’t eat meat, and there have been solely 2 fruit plates within the galley. She needed to get extra fruit plates so the passengers may eat, and it triggered a heated argument … with one of many passengers insisting, “We don’t wish to eat. We do not want meals. We wish to take off … We simply wish to go.”

There have been different causes the flight attendants have been suspicious of the 4 passengers in first, together with 2 others in enterprise class.

The airplane taxied to the runway and was near taking off when the World Trade Center was hit and the airport shut down. United 23 went again to the gate and was evacuated — the airplane was empty and locked. Twenty minutes later, folks on the bottom noticed 2 uniformed folks working in United 23’s passenger cabin. Authorities got here a short while later, opened the door and located the hatch — that led from the stomach of the airplane to the cabin — was open.

The pilot believes these 2 folks could have been there to take away weapons or different incriminating proof. We do not know what was faraway from Flight 23, however we do know somebody put field cutters within the first-class seat pockets within the airplane parked subsequent to United 23 … a airplane that was not scheduled to take off at the moment. The United 23 pilot believes these boxcutters have been meant to be on his flight however somebody confused the two planes.

The FBI interviewed the flight attendants later that day and even took them to a lineup on the Port Authority to see if they may ID the 4 passengers.