OBERLIN, Ohio (WJW) — Sept. 11, 2001, began as a typical workday for the roughly 120 people working the morning shift at Cleveland Center, an air traffic control facility in Oberlin that manages aircraft flying through airspace stretching from New York to Michigan and West Virginia and into Canada.
Among the controllers working that morning was Bill Keaton, who is now retired and lives in Grafton.
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The weather was nearly perfect that morning when United Flight 93 reported light chop at 35,000 feet as the pilots began communicating with Cleveland air traffic controllers at about 9:22 a.m.
The flight had departed Newark, New Jersey, bound for San Francisco, and was passing through Cleveland Center’s airspace.
Within minutes, everything changed.
At 9:28 a.m., air traffic controllers in Oberlin heard unusual noises coming from Flight 93…