T8 B2 FAA NY Center Peter Mulligan Fdr- Handwritten Notes- Alt MFR

8/14/2019 T8 B2 FAA NY Center Peter Mulligan Fdr- Handwritten Notes- Alt MFR

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[Classification]M E M O R A N D U M F O R THE RECORD

Event: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) New York Air Route CenterType of event: InterviewDate: Tuesday, September , 2003Special Access Issues: NonePrepared by: Geoffrey BrownTeam Numb er: 8Location: FAA New York Air Route C enter, Rokonkomo, New YorkParticipants - Non -Commission: Alfred , FAA G eneral ConsulParticipants - Commission: John Azzarello, Miles Kara, Geoffrey Brown

NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, the following paraphrases the response and opinion ofth e interviewee. Please refer to the interview transcript for a complete account.M U L L I G A N1720EDTSupervisor TMU ZNY.Employed by the FAA in June 1973 as ATC specialist at ZNY assigned to area a. spent 9years area a. after that area e for 4.5 5 years as full performance level controller. TM Ucoordinator 3 years after that. Supe rvisor area c 3-4 years. Supervisor assigned to oceanareas for 3-4 yrs. Supervisor area d 3-4 years. Then area b supervisor 3-4 years. ThenTM U specialist.One of two tm supervisors on 7-3 shift. Weekdays would try and have two on duty,weekends sometimes would only have one. Peer of Rosenberg.Right no w report toMichael golden, at time reported to Ch arlie golden. Go lden was in an administrationposition only, and would report to OMIC. That day was Bruce Barrett. Air trafficmanager Michael McCormack was responsible for operational side of building. Assistantfacility manager Dave LaCates.M ulligan, Barrett, LaCates, M cCormack o n administrative side, bottom to top.From watch desk area get a supervisor briefing from the OMIC, or STMC who workedthe mid shift. M id shift is usually 1030pm to 630pm local.


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Situational awareness occurred approximately 10 or 15 minutes past 8. Pete clunky, shiftcoordinator received a call from Boston center over NORDO, non transponder A A 1 1 .Pete informed mulligan. Not a totally unusual situation for an aircraft to loosecomm unications. Phone call came to ZN Y becau se airplane h ad altered its course 90degrees to penetrate New York airspace. Com loss, electric display loss of beacon, anddeviation of course.At that point hijack was not in Mulligan's m ind. First thought in Mulligan's m ind wassome kind of emergency. W ould normally do a 180 and head back to airport, but A A 1 1did a 90 and headed to New Y ork. So that was u nusual. Mon itoring scope was set up tosee fast moving primary that hadn ' t as of yet penetrated N ew York airspace. UsedSparta/Carmel VOR to confirm that th e primary spotted was the right one. A t this pointbetween 70 and 90 miles from New York area. On the heading it had it would havepassed 70 miles to west of metro New Y ork. At this point still thinking emergency.Though t that airplane probably wanted to land at a major airport. - on Tracon h otline andprobably got a TM C. First time it was through Tracon to give info to towers. Had PeteMcClusky call Newark and JFK to inform them of situation after AA11 went under ZNYairspace. Landline went on speaker, then Newark said they saw fire at trade center.Thought of hijack entered m ind when received information from Marty Rosenberg's callwith the airlines over a possible hijack. Not sure if that call was through TM U or anotherunit (see Rosenberg's mfr) . Com pany would no rmally call the cockpit on a cell phone.But usually if something is going wrong pilot will call com pany first. Information onstabbing of stewardess did not reach M ulligan until after the trade center was first hit.People were speculating hijacking, but no one had told h im there were threateningcomm unications or anything akin to the h ijacking. Later on heard of threatenconversations but that was at a recap point. That information would change thinking overpossible eme rgency.Heard from the departure coordinator, James Kurz or Jim stone worthy, of possible radiofailure at Cleveland center.So then h eard of loss of airplane, then w ord of another lost comm unications, o ff courseairplane.UA93 migh t have been next cue in that something was amiss. It was unusual for anairline to be of course and not com municating.Got a hold of Ben Sliney at the command center informing him of NY ground stop.Believes this occurred before any information on cockpit comprom ise came through .Can tell from lack of input in logs sheer volum e of work done on that m orning. Made apile of paperwork that was h anded to Bruce B arrett .Wh en first hea rd report on A A 1 1 of fire at WT C from N ewark tower. Feeling was stillemergency. Had received no key wo rk on anything else. Thought it was a very good


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possibility that AA11 was the hit since when they lost its signal it was 20 miles withinmetro New York airspace. W hen employees came back from cafeteria and informed ofhit, he thought it was a 767 , AA11 crash but not necessarily a hijack. Convinced that itwas AA11.After report of fire at trade center was inf orm ed of problem with U AL 175. Only minutesbetween information.Ua93 left on way to west coast (ZNY to Cleveland center), and heard of problems. Can'tguarantee heard of UA L 175 before or after heard of ua93. Fact that had two events, 11and 93 being similar, had both lost radar and not taking control from ATC. Prettyconfidant that 93 came into play in situational awareness of threat from Indianapolisbefore 175.Initially thought it was 93 that hit WTC.When stopped ZNY traffic, that would be key indicator of time frame.UA L 175. Received the UA L 175 information from area b CIC Ivonna Dowis. Spoke withIvonna at first over AA 11. T rying to get fed ex to verify his altitude. Bittiglia on r42. Fedex was unable to spot UA L 175. Aal75 had a very high speed because of the spacebetween the train lines. No t muc h to be told with sequenc e of events with 175. Believeshad already ground stopped. Believe Bob Pilsner, Military Operations Supervisor, camearound corner out of MOS area and mulligan told him to call the military. Think NORDOairplane just came into area b airspace.Incident report on AA 11 has time markings. W hen asked Pilsner to scramble planes wasthinking to scramble planes on threat of plane coming out of Cleveland center. Actually,definitely asking him to scramble on 175. 93 being out of Cleveland would be too far.Information on AA11 mu st have come out to have bob filsner make phone call tomilitary. Information from the three sources must have had something to do with wantingto contact military.Got enough from Ivonna and from bob Thum ser regarding events with AA 11 andU AL 175.Remembers transponder code change with U AL 175 since they w ere getting a coast trackon UA L 175.Three items at same time: Cleveland, AA11 and UAL 175. Knew U AL 175 was off courseat a fairly early time. M ay have taken a good amount of time to talk to Herndon (RickyBell), wanted to find out if fighters had been scrambled. One of the phone calls to bell gotinformation that fighters had been scrambled. Thought scrambling in response toU AL 175.


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1249 mulligan requests Fillsner get on line with N EA DS. Called to get numb er. 10minutes later Barrett asks to do same thing. Co llin's asks to scram ble because of possibleother hijacking. Hard to keep Bruce apprised of events.Aware of another statement filled out by mulligan.U AL 175 - took a look at all of 56 and part of 42 sectors. Wasn't a doubt in mind thatthere was activity going on. U A L 175 seemed very similar to AA11 except feels thatU AL 175 target was lost because sector is high altitude, and changed p rimary target thatisn't selected you c ould loose it. Lost it on the see all. Never c onfirme d in own m ind thatmulligan sa w tracer.Not as vivid in mind of communication and information sharing. After UA L 175 wentinto th e second tower Marty R osenberg had to leave. Thinks Marty w as present when hittower two. Thinks Marty was not there fo r first hit. Both of them w ere working togetheron the phones.Learned of second impact from Tracon or from CNN out of cafeteria. When was told orheard of second hit, no doubt in mind that he was doing the same thing. And everyoneassumed it was 175 since it had same circumstances of AA 11.After second impact, remembe r hearing of 11 still being airbo rne? No. only conflictinginformation being circulated was when AA11 hit first tower people were saying a lightaircraft hit tower, and AA11 still out there. Couldn't believe th e light aircraft could dothat much dam age. And after second hit only 175 could have done that m uch damage.Squawking beacon code 3321. AA11 completely shut of f beacon code. Was it easier tofollow and determine crash because of 3321? No transponder very hard to track. If havebeacon, as in 175, you hav e all informa tion you want. If transponder is cha nged, get thecoast target with squawked code. Can do certain things with that. Start ne w track. Havinga transponder with wrong code is better than having none at all.Would be no direct correlation to a change in transponder in flight and what happened toAA11.Can see alt as long as there is an operating transponder. A s long as you hav e thecomputer set to a certain setting that reads mod e c. you would se e alt. Mode c intrudersare an example.AA11 with code off completely all you have is primary and very difficult to have. That'swhy asking Ivonna on alt. With UAL 175 can watch the alt descend. Also can see mode con radar target.Recommendations to be carried forward:Codes have no t changed over time.


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AFTER REVIEWING TRANSCRIPT:0841 received inform ation from TMU that American 11 had been hijacked. Thatinformation probably cam e through M arty who was on line with company, the 46 line atapprox 830am. Info on flight attendant being stabbed was later to Mulligan's recollection.F1290 on AA11 from Ivonna coordinating an aircraft for a visual. Pete called Tracon andNewark tower.Marty did leave floor after first impact. Marty came back from break after AA11 eventhad begun.Military assistance from Pilsner around 843. Time of the essence so that is why he askedPilsner since he figured Pilsner would have a pre programm ed scram bled phone to theappropriate place in his office. Figured he cou ld contact the right people.Written procedures to request military assistance is there now - just didn' t take as muchurgency as now. Num bers to call NEADS. Can get anyone from airman to colonel.Bounced to phone to phone to phone. Tried in past to get info from military since somuch going on. Sometimes it takes too long a period of t ime to get the information.Traffic man agem ent coordinator twice - one a hijack to Ivonna, had to be in 70s observedin area a. second was as a TMC late 80s one area in New York go t involved. Don't knowwhere departed from. Information through ATC. Mostly informed as procedures just tostay quiet and wait to see what requests are made.Probably very similar procedures to today. Contact comm and center.On 9/11 would have been about same procedures to get military assistance. Probably inOMIC handboo k g uide. Call NEA DS to get fighters.O ne recommendation would be that on DEN gets headquarters clerk, NEA DS, customs -would get a quick response. Unfortunately the way the DEN is being used it is gettinglike "the little boy who cries wolf, procedures from FA A need to be more thorough an dmore professional. Have p eople m ore air traffic savvy when dealing with these hotlines.Should have a number directly to someone who has the authority to make imm ediatedecisions. Right now bureaucracy might get in its way. If fighters were 6 or 7 minutesearlier still would have taken to long to get permission to engage. More than likely thosefighters would have been left waiting fo r orders. Should streamline comm unications andhave people with real time information d irectly linked to people with authority to makedecisions.Training and awareness of people. ATCs and air traffic controllers need to be aware.Need to be part of basic training to deal with unusual situations. Vast majority of A T C sgot training from military in past. Training was a little hard nosed. Many more trainingfailures. But the product was a better product. Do have refresher training. Bringsawareness back but can't compare to actual events.


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Fictitious situations in w hich there could be sim ulations that are as far out of the box asthe event of 9/11. Pre 9/11 one scenario Forbes through out was about a plane being runinto a building. If you were developmental, it would be what would you do if somebodycoming out of Philadelphia w anted to hit the un building.. .type of training that used ofhappen back then. Different types of emergencies in military dealing with fighters thanwith comm ercial carriers. Have to be more flexible with training. Can't get too far out ofthe box in training - 9/11 taught that. Would be positive if people tried to pick up new9/11 type scenario.1853EDT


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T8 B2 FAA NY Center Peter Mulligan Fdr- Handwritten Notes- Alt MFR