Elaine Lawrence

The night before 9/11, two men are observed behaving suspiciously on a United Airlines flight from San Diego to Boston. This is according Elaine Lawrence, who is one of the plane’s flight attendants. She later recalls that the men—one who appears Middle Eastern, the other Caucasian—upgrade from coach to first class, and then sit “on the left side of the plane, seats 3A and 3B,” near the cockpit door.

She will comment: “It was really weird. They didn’t eat, they didn’t sleep, they didn’t watch the movie. Why upgrade?” Furthermore, she recalls: “When we were getting close to Boston they asked if we could see the World Trade Center towers. ‘Do we see the towers?’ the guy kept asking. I told him we wouldn’t be going by New York.” After the attacks the following day, she will call the FBI and inform them of this incident.

Lawrence was in fact originally scheduled to be an attendant on Flight 175—the second plane to hit the WTC—on 9/11. However, as she is planning to go on vacation, she has traded shifts with another flight attendant, Amy Jarret.