The time of the 23 DME transmission over the ARINC radio link was 8:18 PM based on George Harrison's notes. The time the teletype operator pressed his SEND button was 8:22 PM.
Bob,
How confident are you that Harrison's notes are correct and that he was keeping accurate time? This is an honest question - not trolling.
George Harrison was the top NWA official at SEATAC. You can bet your sweet bippy that he was listening in on that ARINC radio patch along with Al Lee and other senior NWA officials in Seattle. When he wrote down 8:18 PM for that 23 DME ARINC call you can be assured that it was 8:18 PM. You can also rest assured that senior NWA officials in Minneapolis heard that same call.
While the air traffic control people were not on the ARINC frequency, you can bet that the airliner received the attention of all the senior air traffic control managers in both the Seattle and Oakland ATC Centers. Hijackings got everyone's attention and cooperation.
Thanks, Bob. I was reviewing Harrison's files on the Vault and came across two other notations that appear to indicate that the time was 8:22 when the plane was "23 miles DME...." Are these Harrison's notations as well? If not, whose might they be?
I have attached the files below.
Those 8:22 PM numbers are from the ARINC teletype printouts. Not everyone at Seattle was plugged into the phone patch.
If you want to haggle over this, here is where you need to start. Print out all the Seattle ATC transcipts from takeoff at 7:36 PM thru the handoff to the Oakland Center in northern California at 9:45 PM.
Print out all the ARINC teletype transcripts that you can find from just a few minutes after the hijacking at 3:00 PM until the handoff to the Oakland Center at 9:45 PM. Print out the "FBI Files" which are online here on Shutter's site. You will have a real neat pile of paper. Now compare everything that lists a time and location for the airliner.
There are two position reports given on the Seattle ATC transcripts immediately after takeoff for which ARNIC teletype transcripts exist. There is a two minute time difference between the ATC transmissions and a corresponding teletype transcript for the same event. You will have to do some digging to compare the 8:18 PM and 8:22 times.
Fred Poynter from the WSHM and I had a number of conversations with the ARINC headquarters staff about how the transcripts were prepared. They said after the airliner radioed a message to the ARINC ground station (and other people could hear this radio conversation after the phone patch was established) it was necessary for the ground station staff to "format" and type the message into the teletypewriter and then push the send button which would record the time sent at the bottom of the message. Even under the best conditions, there would be a finite time between the receipt of the radio communication and the teletypewriter message being sent. That time difference would be greater for long messages. The 8:18 PM time in the Harrison papers would probably be the start of the radio transmission.
The ARINC staff in Maryland was extremely cooperative with Fred and myself. I think everyone in the organization got involved and it looked like half of the people in the organization were being copied on all of the e-mails. Their technical people offered to evaluate the teletype transcripts that the Harrison family had loaned to the WSHM. However, those transcripts were no longer available to Fred. But again, the ARINC people were extremely interested and cooperative on this matter.
