September 12, 2001 Wednesday

'Everything Seemed Normal When They Left' Boston Airport

Ceci Connolly and Pamela Ferdinand, Washington Post Staff Writers

BOSTON Sept. 11

United Airlines Flight 175, loaded with fuel but more than half empty, left the ground 14 minutes after its 8 a.m. scheduled departure.

A small crowd gathered in Terminal C of Boston's Logan Airport for the nonstop, cross-country trip to Los Angeles. At capacity, the Boeing 767 can carry 177 people, but only 56 passengers and nine crew members were aboard today.

Departure was routine, said Joseph Lawless, head of security at the Massachusetts Port Authority. At 7:58, the jetliner pulled away from Gate 19, just minutes behind American Airlines Flight 11, also en route to the West Coast.

"Everything seemed normal when they left Logan," he said. There were no unusual communications from either Boston-based plane, he added.

In the cockpit was Victor Saracini, a former Navy pilot who lived outside Philadelphia, according to a family spokesman and United employee Frank Lyons. Saracini, 51, had been flying commercial jets for about 16 years, his in-laws, Bernard and Bernadette Hildebrand, told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The second pilot has not been identified. Lawless said the entire crew -- two pilots and a total of seven flight attendants -- was based in the Boston area and had spent the previous night there. (According to United, crew members do not necessarily live in the cities they list as their home base.)

Also on board United 175 was flight attendant Al Marchand, who had said goodbye to his wife, Rebecca, after the couple spent a weekend in Boston. His wife took another flight toward their home in Alamagordo, N.M., but was stranded in Denver when all flights were later grounded.

Al Marchand perished 49 minutes into the flight at 9:03, when the plane became the second aircraft to hit the World Trade Center.

"He really had an outgoing personality, strong people skills," said Sam Trujillo, Marchand's former boss. "He enjoyed working with the public."

Less than 30 minutes into a journey that was to have taken six hours, Flight 175 took a sharp turn south into central New Jersey, near Trenton, an unusual diversion for a plane heading west, airline employees said. It then headed directly toward Manhattan.

Somewhere between Philadelphia and Newark -- less than 90 miles from Manhattan -- the aircraft made its final radar contact, according to a statement released by United Airlines. About the same time, American Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, setting off a massive explosion.

Just 18 minutes later, witnesses looked up in amazement to watch what appeared to be a horrible rerun.

As smoke filled the sky from the wreckage of the first strike, Raymond Dalcortivo, 35, parked his bus in midtown and raced to the roof of a nearby building.

That's when he saw the second plane hit the other tower. "We all started screaming," he said. "There was a huge boom. It's something that's going to be with me for the rest of my life."

The Boston Herald, quoting a source it did not identify, said authorities seized a car at Logan airport that contained Arabic-language flight training manuals. The source said five Arab men had been identified as suspects, including a trained pilot. At least two of those men flew to Logan today from Portland, Maine, the Herald said.

The luggage of one of the men who flew to the airport today did not make his scheduled connection. The Associated Press said the Boston Globe reported the luggage contained a copy of the Koran, an instructional video on flying commercial airliners and a fuel consumption calculator.

Connolly reported from Washington, Ferdinand from Boston.