At 9:42 a.m. on September 11, 2001, the Air Traffic Control Command Center in Herndon, Virginia, “learned from news reports that a plane had struck the Pentagon. The Command Center’s national operations manager, Ben Sliney, ordered all FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] facilities to instruct all aircraft to land at the nearest airport. This was an unprecedented order. The air traffic control system handled it with great skill, as about 4,500 commercial and general aviation aircraft soon landed without incident.”
– 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, Page 29