Flight 93

United Airlines Flight 93 was twenty-five minutes late leaving Newark on the morning of September 11, 2001. NPS (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/flight93nps.htm) It lifted off at 8:42, bound for San Francisco, with thirty-three passengers and seven crew aboard: Captain Jason Dahl and First Officer LeRoy Homer in the cockpit, and flight attendants Lorraine Bay, Sandra Bradshaw, Wanda Green, CeeCee Lyles, and Deborah Welsh in the cabin. NPS timeline (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/september-11-2001-timeline.htm) Four more men boarded with them. Ziad Jarrah, Ahmed al-Haznawi, Ahmed al-Nami, and Saeed al-Ghamdi were al-Qaeda operatives, and the delay meant that by the time the wheels left the ground, American Airlines Flight 11 had already been seized and United Airlines Flight 175 was being taken. Commission Ch. 1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf)

For the first forty-six minutes, the flight was routine. Beneath it, the morning was not. At 8:46:40, Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. At 9:03:11, Flight 175 struck the South Tower. At 9:37:46, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon. The people on Flight 93 knew none of this, until the airline itself tried to tell them.

At 9:19, and again at 9:24, United dispatcher Ed Ballinger sent cockpit warnings over the aircraft communications system: beware any cockpit intrusion — two aircraft had hit the World Trade Center. Dahl's reply came at 9:26, and it carries the last note of a normal world: "Ed, confirm latest mssg plz — Jason." Commission Ch. 1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf)

The hijackers attacked at 9:28, over eastern Ohio, cruising at 35,000 feet. Cleveland air traffic controllers heard the cockpit fill with the sounds of a fight and a voice screaming Mayday. The airplane suddenly dropped 685 feet before the hijackers took the controls. NPS timeline (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/september-11-2001-timeline.htm) They wore red bandanas and carried knives. They stormed the cockpit and incapacitated Dahl and Homer. In the cabin, they stabbed. At least four callers would later report stabbings to the people on the ground, and a flight attendant was killed. Commission Ch. 1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf)

Four minutes later, Jarrah's voice came over the cabin intercom, and the Commission recorded his words exactly: "Ladies and gentlemen: Here the captain, please sit down, keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board. So, sit." Commission Ch. 1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf) The passengers and crew were forced to the back of the plane and told to be quiet.

The aircraft turned southeast. The flight data recorder would later show that Jarrah instructed the autopilot to turn the plane around and head east, and that the plane's navigation was dialed toward Washington: at 9:55, Jarrah entered the navigational code for Reagan National Airport into the flight computer. NPS FAQ (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/frequently-asked-questions.htm) Recovered evidence and interrogations would establish that the intended target was most likely the United States Capitol, where the House had convened at nine that morning and was now evacuating. NPS: the story (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/flight93story.htm) NPS: the target (https://www.nps.gov/places/the-target.htm)

The people in the back of the plane began calling out on the seat-back airfones. Thirteen passengers and crew members would place thirty-seven calls between 9:28 and 10:03, and those calls are the record of what happened next. NPS: the calls (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/phone-calls-from-flight-93.htm) They called family, friends, the airline, and the authorities, and from the people on the ground they learned what the morning had become: the towers, the Pentagon, planes turned into weapons.

Tom Burnett called his wife Deena four times. She was watching the attacks on television at their home in California, and she told him what she was seeing. He told her what he was seeing: men with knives, claiming to have a bomb. "They've already knifed a guy," he said. Commission Ch. 1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf) NPS: the calls (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/phone-calls-from-flight-93.htm)

Flight attendant Sandra Bradshaw called the United maintenance facility in San Francisco at 9:35 and spoke for nearly six minutes. She told the manager that hijackers were in the cabin behind the first-class curtain and in the cockpit, that they had announced a bomb, that they had pulled a knife, and that they had killed a flight attendant. The manager would remember her as shockingly calm. NPS: the calls (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/phone-calls-from-flight-93.htm) Around 9:50 she called her husband in Greensboro, North Carolina. The passengers, she told him, were heating water in the galley to throw on the hijackers. When the call ended, she said, everyone was running up to first class. NPS: Bradshaw (https://www.nps.gov/people/sandywaughbradshaw.htm) NPS: the calls (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/phone-calls-from-flight-93.htm)

Todd Beamer tried his wife's line twice and the calls would not go through. He was routed instead to a GTE Airfone supervisor named Lisa Jefferson, and he stayed on with her for thirteen minutes, praying with her, describing two pilots on the floor, dead or dying. FBI memo (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Memorandum_for_the_Record_(MFR)_of_the_Interview_of_Lisa_Jefferson_of_the_GTE_Airphone_Conducted_by_Team_7_-_DPLA_-_290970e7216803052ed256955ee163b3.pdf) CeeCee Lyles left her husband a message from a seat-back phone. Passenger Edward Felt locked himself in a lavatory and dialed 911: "We are being hijacked! We are being hijacked!" FireRescue1 (https://www.firerescue1.com/9-11/articles/pa-dispatchers-story-featured-in-new-911-book-0NmeXxwo6XbQ7EAw/)

In just over thirty minutes, thirty-three strangers and seven crew members absorbed the news, worked out what their plane was for, and made a collective decision. They took a vote. Jeremy Glick told his wife Lyzbeth that the passengers were voting on whether to storm the cockpit and retake the plane. NPS: the calls (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/phone-calls-from-flight-93.htm) There was no shared look out a window; there was a hurried plan, built out of airfone fragments: someone praying, someone being warned by the person they loved, and a decision to go.

At about 9:57, less than half an hour after the hijacking, they went. NPS (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/flight93nps.htm) The cockpit voice recorder caught what followed: loud thumps, crashes, shouts, the breaking of glass and plates. To stop them, Jarrah rolled the airplane left and right and pitched the nose up and down. NPS: the story (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/flight93story.htm) At 10:00:03 he stabilized the plane, and the recorder caught a cold exchange in Arabic. "Is that it? Shall we finish it off?" "No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off." Commission Ch. 1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf)

They kept coming. At 10:02:23, a hijacker said, "Pull it down! Pull it down!" The Commission's judgment, written into the official record, is that the hijackers must have judged the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them. The control wheel turned hard to the right. The airplane rolled onto its back, and one of the hijackers began shouting that God is the greatest, with the sounds of the counterattack continuing underneath. At 10:03:11, United Airlines Flight 93 plowed into an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, upside down, at 563 miles per hour. Commission Ch. 1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf) NPS timeline (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/september-11-2001-timeline.htm) The 5,500 gallons of jet fuel aboard exploded into a fireball that rose higher than the trees. NPS FAQ (https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/frequently-asked-questions.htm) All forty-four aboard were killed: the thirty-three passengers, the seven crew, and the four hijackers.

The field is 125 miles from Washington, about twenty minutes' flying time. Commission Ch. 1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf) At 10:02, a minute before the crash, communicators in the White House shelter were still receiving reports from the Secret Service of an inbound aircraft, presumably hijacked, heading toward the capital. That aircraft was United 93. The Secret Service did not know the plane was already down in Pennsylvania. Commission Ch. 1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf)

Of the four hijacked airliners that morning, Flight 93 was the only one that failed to reach its target. The Commission's verdict on Jarrah stands as the last word on the operation: his objective was to crash his airliner into symbols of the American Republic, the Capitol or the White House. "He was defeated by the alerted, unarmed passengers of United 93." Commission Ch. 1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf)

They had been told to sit down and be quiet, to accept the script written for them by men with knives. They refused to be cargo. What the airfones carried in that half hour was everything a person is: an airfone prayer, a husband's warning, and two words before the charge. "Are you ready? Okay! Let's roll." FBI memo (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Memorandum_for_the_Record_(MFR)_of_the_Interview_of_Lisa_Jefferson_of_the_GTE_Airphone_Conducted_by_Team_7_-_DPLA_-_290970e7216803052ed256955ee163b3.pdf) Let's roll. Then they did, into history, into grief, into a Pennsylvania field twenty minutes from the Capitol — and the Capitol still stands.