Editing American Airlines Flight 77 (section)

==Background==
The flight was commandeered as part of the September 11 attacks. The attacks themselves cost somewhere in the region of $400,000 and $500,000 to execute, but the source of this financial support remains unknown.<ref>{{cite web |title=9/11 Commission Staff Report |url=https://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/staff_statement_16.pdf |date=September 2005 |access-date=May 6, 2023 |pages=202–203}}</ref> Led by [[Khalid Sheikh Mohammed]], who was described as being the "principal architect" of the attacks in the ''9/11 Commission Report'',{{sfn|9/11 Commission|2004a|p=372}} al-Qaeda was motivated by several factors, not least of which was anti-Americanism and anti-Western sentiment. Because al-Qaeda only had the resources to commandeer four passenger jets, there was disagreement between Mohammed and [[Osama bin Laden]] over which targets should be prioritized. Mohammed favored striking the Twin Towers of the [[World Trade Center (1973-2001)|World Trade Center]] complex in [[New York City]], while bin-Laden was bent on toppling the United States federal government, a goal he believed could be accomplished by destroying [[the Pentagon]], the [[White House]] and the [[United States Capitol]].<ref>{{cite web |title=9/11 Commission Staff Report |url=https://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/staff_statement_16.pdf |date=September 2005 |access-date=May 6, 2023 |page=18}}</ref> Though bin Laden himself expressed a preference for the destruction of the White House over the Capitol, his subordinates disagreed, citing its difficulty in striking from the air. [[Hani Hanjour]]―likely while in the presence of fellow Flight 77 accomplice [[Nawaf al-Hazmi]]―scoped out the [[Washington metropolitan area]] on July 20, 2001, by renting a plane and taking a practice flight from [[Fairfield Township, Essex County, New Jersey|Fairfield, New Jersey]] to [[Gaithersburg, Maryland]] in order to determine the feasibility of each of the possible candidates.<ref>{{cite web |title=9/11 Commission Staff Report |url=https://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/staff_statement_16.pdf |date=September 2005 |access-date=May 6, 2023 |page=19}}</ref>

In the end, 19 terrorists participated in the attacks against the United States, consisting of three groups of five men each and one group of four. The nine hijackers on Flight 77 and [[United Airlines Flight 93]] were assigned the task of striking governmental structures in or near the national capital of [[Washington, D.C.]], and as such, the objective was for the two hijackings to be coordinated insofar as both planes being aimed towards targets in the [[Washington metropolitan area]].{{sfn|9/11 Commission|2004a|p=50}} Significant complications faced by the four terrorists on Flight 93 ensured that Flight 77 was the only one to successfully attack a target intended by al-Qaeda when it struck the Pentagon in [[Arlington County]], [[Virginia]] at 09:37, while a passenger uprising forced the hijackers aboard Flight 93 to crash the plane in rural [[Pennsylvania]].

Regardless, the degree of coordination between Flight 77 and Flight 93 was evidently less than that of [[American Airlines Flight 11]] and [[United Airlines Flight 175]], the two airliners that were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center 17 minutes apart in a joint attack on New York City. Flights 11 and 175 both departed from [[Logan International Airport]] in [[Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]] for [[Los Angeles International Airport]], and crashed into targets that stood next to each other, in contrast to the Pentagon and the federal government building Flight 93 was set to crash into, which were simply located in the same general area.

One noteworthy difference between the attacks in the National Capital Region and those in New York is that the teams on Flights 77 and 93 did not follow suit with their counterparts on Flights 11 and 175 by booking planes from the same airport with the same [[California]] destination in mind. Flight 77's group hijacked a plane out of [[Dulles International Airport]] in Virginia, conveniently situated near the Pentagon and consequently the capital, on a flight path destined for LAX. Conversely, Flight 93 departed from [[Newark International Airport]] in [[New Jersey]], nearly 200 miles northeast of D.C., bound for [[San Francisco International Airport]]. There was also no contact between Hanjour and Flight 93 hijacker pilot [[Ziad Jarrah]] on the day of the attacks, whereas [[Mohamed Atta]] and [[Marwan al-Shehhi]] spoke over the phone while preparing to board their respective flights, apparently to confirm the attacks were ready to begin.{{sfn|9/11 Commission|2004a|p=20}}