Phone calls from planes described final, fateful moments

The dreadful final moments of passengers on the four hijacked jets were shared with relatives in mobile phone conversations from the planes.

Barbara Olson, the wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olson, who called her husband as the hijacking was occurring. She was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 that left Dulles International Airport in Washington and crashed into the Pentagon.

The passengers had been herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and told to call their families and tell them that they were about to die.

The officials said Ms Olson told her husband the attackers had used knife–like instruments to take over the plane, and forced passengers to the back of the jet.

Theodore Olson confirmed his wife made the calls before dying. "She called from the plane while it was being hijacked. I wish it wasn't so but it is," he said.

A businessman, his wife and young child aboard a United flight that left Boston and crashed into the World Trade Centrre twice called his father in Connecticut as his plane was being hijacked, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

The official said the victim's father told the FBI his son made two calls, and both times the phone cut off. In the first call, the businessman said a stewardess had been stabbed. In the second call, the son said his plane was going down.

The man was identified as Peter Hanson. A minister confirmed the cell phone call to his father, Lee Hanson.

"He called to his parents' home, and so in that way they were so together in that moment," the Rev. Bonnie Bardot said.

And a flight attendant aboard the second plane which struck the World Trade Centre managed to call an emergency number from the back of the airplane, an American Airlines source said. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the flight attendant reported her fellow attendants had been stabbed, the cabin had been taken over, and they were going down in New York.

A San Francisco woman told KTVU–TV that her son, Mark Bingham, 31, called her from aboard United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. "We've been taken over. There are three men that say they have a bomb," Alice Hoglan quoted her son as saying.