A United Airlines Flight 23 pilot scheduled to fly on 9/11 says he lived in denial for years about the possibility of potential terrorists targeting his plane that day.

Who is Tom Mannello?

Tom Mannello, the pilot of United Airlines Flight 23, believes his aircraft was intended to be the fifth one used in the planned terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Mannello reports that the flight was supposed to leave at 9 a.m. but was forced to return to the boarding gate. Mannello backs up his claim by claiming that two box cutters were discovered in the first-class seat pockets of the jet parked next to Flight 23, which had a tail number that was only one digit wrong. This led him to suspect that someone was attempting to install box cutters on his jet but had misidentified its tail number as that of an adjacent aircraft.

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Sandy Thorngren, another flight attendant on Flight 23, backs up Mannello’s idea with her own experience. She recalls a woman in a headscarf, probably a male in disguise, and a first-class youngster who refused to eat before departure.

Even though it was just 8 a.m., they appeared eager to take off and were sweating tremendously. Thorngren considered this strange because the cabin of this plane, like most others at 8 a.m., was frigid.

In their inquiry, Mannello tells TMZ that he maneuvered the jet towards the runway, oblivious to what was going on in Manhattan at the time. He was unable to leave because air traffic control ordered all flights to return to their gates for a mass evacuation.

Two uniformed persons were spotted racing inside the cabin twenty minutes after the passengers and staff left United Flight 23. Investigators then discovered an open floor hatch leading from the cabin through the plane’s underbelly and ultimately out onto the tarmac.

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This sparked an identification line, in which flight attendants were hauled away by the FBI to the Airport Authority facility to identify the first-class passengers whose behavior was deemed suspect. In the documentary “TMZ Investigates,” Thorngren claims that she believes Flight 23 from JFK to LAX was planned to be the fifth jet used in the terrorist assault.

“I believe Flight 23 from JFK to LAX was the sixth jet,” Thorngren recalls. “That it is what still frightens and haunts me to this day.”