@cbsmornings: Vanessa Minter was the very first person on the ground to learn about the impending terror attacks on 9/11, when, from Cary, North Carolina, the American Airlines reservation agent spoke with flight attendant Betty Ong by phone. Ong was calling from the back galley of Flight 11, which took off from Boston en route to Los Angeles. “The last thing she said to me was pray for us,” Minter recalls. Moments later, the line went dead, “which was when they hit the World Trade Center.” After that heroic phone call, Minter wrote a letter to Ong’s family, which is how the flight attendant’s brother, Harry, learned of the call: “We were so proud of Betty.”

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Friday 11 September 2026 16:09:21 GMT