Circling Plane Ultimate

Witness #1 Jason Rothfeld, 22, of New York looked out of his sixth floor window Tuesday morning and saw a low-flying airplane, an odd sight in lower Manhattan. Moments later, the plane circled around the World Trade Center and crashed into the middle of the 110-story south tower causing a burst of flames, he said. "I was scared and didn't know what was going on," Rothfeld said. "After the first plane hit, you could think it's an accident, but when the second plane hit, I knew something bigger was going on."

Witness #2 * From his Goldman Sachs investment office, James Spiegelberg, formerly of Ogdensburg, watched the second plane hit the south tower. "It circled part way around the building, then swerved back right into it," he said.

Witness #3 "A controller who was in the New York radar room said the confusion was so intense that controllers could do little but watch as the second jet circled around and hit the second World Trade Center tower from the opposite direction as the first flight. An industry official says that when FAA officials initially became aware of the hijacking, they believed the planes might be headed overseas, in a more-typical piracy scenario. Even after the first plane hit the tower, FAA controllers weren't sure it was a deliberate act, but believed that the crash might have been a result of a struggle prior to the pilot landing at a N.Y. airport to refuel for a flight abroad."