United Airlines Flight 93

United Airlines Flight 93 was a domestic scheduled passenger flight that was hijacked by four Al-Qaeda terrorists on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. The hijackers planned to crash the plane into a federal government building in the national capital of Washington, D.C. The mission failed when the passengers fought back, forcing the terrorists to crash the plane in Shanksville in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, preventing them from reaching Al-Qaeda's intended target, but killing everyone aboard the flight. The airliner involved, a Boeing 757-200 with 44 passengers and crew, was flying United Airlines' daily scheduled morning flight from Newark International Airport in New Jersey to San Francisco International Airport in California, making it the only plane hijacked that day not to be a Los Angeles–bound flight.

Forty-six minutes into the flight, the hijackers killed one passenger, stormed the cockpit, and struggled with the pilots as controllers on the ground listened in. Ziad Jarrah, who had trained as a pilot, took control of the aircraft and diverted it back toward the East Coast, in the direction of D.C. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, considered principal instigators of the attacks, have claimed that the intended target was the U.S. Capitol Building. Construction of a permanent Flight 93 National Memorial was dedicated on September 10, 2011, and a concrete and glass visitor center (situated on a hill overlooking the site) was opened exactly four years later.

Hijackers

The hijacking of Flight 93 was led by Ziad Jarrah, a member of the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. He was born in Lebanon to a wealthy and secular Muslim family. He intended to become a pilot and moved to Germany in 1996, enrolling at the University of Greifswald to study German. A year later, he moved to Hamburg and began studying aeronautical engineering at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. In Hamburg, Jarrah became a devout Muslim and associated with the radical Hamburg cell.

In November 1999, Jarrah left Hamburg for Afghanistan, where he spent three months. While there, he met with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in January 2000. Jarrah returned to Hamburg at the end of January and in February obtained a new passport containing no stamped records of his travels by reporting his passport as stolen. arriving in Florida in June 2000. There, he began taking flying lessons and training in hand-to-hand combat. Jarrah maintained contact with his girlfriend in Germany and with his family in Lebanon in the months preceding the attacks. This close contact upset Mohamed Atta, the tactical leader of the plot, and Al-Qaeda planners may have considered another operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, to replace him if he had backed out.

Four "muscle" hijackers were trained to storm the cockpit and overpower the crew, and three accompanied Jarrah on Flight93. The first, Ahmed al-Nami, arrived in Miami, Florida, on May 28, 2001, on a six-month tourist visa with United Airlines Flight 175 hijackers Hamza al-Ghamdi and Mohand al-Shehri. The second, Ahmed al-Haznawi, arrived in Miami on June8 with Flight11 hijacker Wail al-Shehri. The third, Saeed al-Ghamdi, arrived in Orlando, Florida, on June 27 with Flight175 hijacker Fayez Banihammad. Jarrah's family said he had been an "innocent passenger" on board the flight.

Al-Qaeda had intended for the attacks to be carried out by four teams of five men each, but only 19 terrorists were able to participate when the day came. The missing 20th was allegedly Mohammed al-Qahtani, who flew into Orlando from Dubai on August 3, 2001, intending to board Flight 93 as its fifth hijacker (and fourth muscle hijacker) on September 11. He was questioned by officials, who were dubious that he could support himself with only $2,800 cash to his name, and suspicious that he planned to become an illegal immigrant as he was using a one-way ticket. He was sent back to Dubai, and subsequently returned to Saudi Arabia.

Flight

The aircraft involved in the hijacking was a Boeing 757-222, registration The airplane had a capacity of 182 passengers; the September 11 flight carried 37 passengers, including the four terrorists, and seven crew members, a load factor of 20 percent, considerably below the 52 percent average Tuesday load factor for Flight93. The seven crew members were Captain Jason Dahl (43), First Officer LeRoy Homer Jr. (36), flight attendants Lorraine Bay, Sandra Bradshaw, Wanda Green, CeeCee Lyles, and purser Deborah Welsh.

Boarding

thumb|A U.S. flag flies over Gate 17 of Terminal A at Newark Liberty International Airport, departure gate of United93.

At 5:01 a.m. on the morning of September 11, Jarrah placed a cell phone call from Newark to Marwan al-Shehhi, the hijacker pilot of United Airlines Flight 175, in Boston, which authorities believe was to confirm that the plan for the attacks was proceeding. While al-Shehhi is known to have also communicated with American Airlines Flight 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta on the morning of the attacks for the same reason he spoke to Jarrah, At 07:03, al-Ghamdi checked in without any luggage while al-Nami checked in two bags. None of the security checkpoint personnel reported anything unusual about the hijackers.

Al-Haznawi and al-Ghamdi boarded the aircraft at 07:39 and sat in first class seats 6B and 3D respectively. Al-Nami boarded one minute later and sat in first class seat 3C. Before boarding the plane, Jarrah made five telephone calls to Lebanon, one to France, and one to his girlfriend in Germany; he had sent a farewell letter the day before to say he loved her. He boarded at 07:48 and sat in seat 1B. It remained delayed on the ground until 08:42 because of heavy airport congestion. By 09:02, less than a minute before Flight 175 hit the South Tower, Flight 93 reached its cruising altitude of . At 09:24, Flight93 received Ballinger's ACARS warning, "Beware any cockpit intrusiontwo a/c [aircraft] hit World Trade Center". At 09:26, pilot Jason Dahl, apparently puzzled by the message, responded, "Ed, confirm latest mssg plz -- Jason".

Hijacking

The cockpit was breached at 09:28, by which point Flights 11 and 175 had long since crashed into the World Trade Center; the North Tower had been burning for nearly 42 minutes and the South Tower for 25 minutes. The only other plane still in the air, Flight 77, was within nine minutes of striking the Pentagon. The hijackers on those flights had waited no more than half an hour to commandeer the aircraft, most likely striking after the seat belt sign had been turned off and cabin service had begun. assaulted the cockpit, and moved the remaining passengers and crew to the rear of the plane to minimize any chance that either the crew or the passengers would interfere with the attack.

The cockpit voice recorder began recording the final thirty minutes of Flight93 at 09:31:57. At this moment, it recorded Jarrah announcing, "Ladies and gentlemen: here the captain. Please sit down, keep remaining seating. We have a bomb on board. So sit." The commission believed Jarrah tried to make an announcement to the passengers, but pressed the wrong button, sending the message to Cleveland controllers; Mohamed Atta had made the same error on Flight 11. The controller understood the transmission, but responded, "Calling Cleveland center, you're unreadable. Say again, slowly."

The flight recordings indicate that a wounded man, believed to be Dahl, was moaning in the cockpit. The man pleaded, "No more," or "No," repeatedly, as the hijackers shouted for him to sit down and to stop touching something. Sandy believes that Dahl took actions to interfere with the hijackers, including possibly disengaging the autopilot, and rerouting the plane's radio frequency so that Jarrah's attempts to communicate with the passengers were instead transmitted to air traffic controllers. A woman, thought to be first-class flight attendant Debbie Welsh, is heard being held captive in the background and is heard struggling with the hijackers and pleading, "Please, please, don't hurt me." Jarrah instructed the autopilot to turn the plane and head east at 09:35:09. The aircraft ascended to and air traffic controllers immediately moved several aircraft out of Flight93's flightpath. Air traffic controllers did not hear from the flight again. According to the commission, the hijackers could have learned of the successful attacks on the World Trade Center from messages being sent by United Airlines to the cockpits of its transcontinental flights, including Flight 93, warning of cockpit intrusion and telling of the New York attacks. as at 09:40, there were horn sounds that indicated the hijackers were having trouble with the autopilot and were fiddling with a green knob. "This green knob?" one of the hijackers asks the other in Arabic. Another hijacker responded, "Yes, that's the one." Ten passengers and two crew members were able to connect, providing information to family, friends, and others on the ground. Burnett explained that the plane had been hijacked by men claiming to have a bomb. He also said a passenger had been stabbed with a knife and that he believed the bomb threat was a ruse to control the passengers. In his next call, Deena informed Burnett of the attack on the Pentagon. Burnett relayed this to the other passengers and told Deena he and a group of other passengers were putting together a plan to take control of the plane. He ended his last call by saying, "Don't worry, we're going to do something." Rothenberg was the only first class passenger who did not make a phone call after the hijacking. He was seated in 5B, and al-Haznawi sat directly behind him in 6B. On Flight 11, Satam al-Suqami, in seat 10B, attacked passenger Daniel Lewin, who was seated directly in front of him in 9B. One assumption is that Haznawi attacked Rothenberg, unprovoked, to frighten other passengers and crew into compliance. Alternatively, Rothenberg may have attempted to stop the hijacking and confront the hijackers. Jeremy Glick called his wife at 09:37:41 from row 27 and told her the flight was hijacked by three dark-skinned men who looked "Iranian", wearing red bandanas and wielding knives.

Passenger Lauren Grandcolas called her husband twice, once before takeoff and once during the hijacking at 09:39:21. He missed both her calls. Grandcolas made 7 more calls in the next 4 minutes, When the hijackers veered the plane sharply south, Beamer briefly panicked, exclaiming, "We're going down! We're going down!" Linda Gronlund called her sister, Elsa Strong, at 09:46:05 and left her a message saying there were "men with a bomb".

Flight attendant CeeCee Lyles called her husband at 09:47:57 and left him a message saying the plane had been hijacked. Jarrah dialed in the VHF omnidirectional range (VOR) frequency for the VOR navigational aid at Reagan National Airport at 09:55:11 to direct the plane toward Washington, D.C. Beamer told Jefferson that he and a few passengers were getting together and were planning to "jump" the hijacker with the bomb.

Passenger revolt

The passenger revolt on Flight93 began at 09:57, after the passengers voted on whether to act. Multiple news reports (originally based on a 9-1-1 supervisor's account after having overheard the call) asserted that Edward Felt reported hearing an explosion and seeing smoke from an undetermined location on the plane. These reports were not corroborated by Shaw or Felt's wife, Sandra, who listened to the recording afterwards.

CeeCee Lyles called her husband once more from a cell phone and told him the passengers were forcing their way into the cockpit. Three times in a period of five seconds there were shouts of pain or distress from a hijacker outside the cockpit, suggesting a hijacker who was standing guard outside the cockpit was being attacked by the passengers. Five seconds later, he asked, "Is that it? Shall we finish it off?" Another hijacker responded, "No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off."

The plane then crashed into an empty field in Stonycreek, Pennsylvania, about 20 minutes' flying time from Washington, D.C.

There is disagreement among some family members of the passengers and the investigative officials as to whether the passengers managed to breach the cockpit or even break the cockpit door. The 9/11 Commission Report concluded that "the hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them". and killed at least one of the hijackers guarding the cockpit door; some interpreted the audio as suggesting that the passengers and hijackers struggled for control of the yoke.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center deep under the White House, authorized Flight 93 to be shot down but, upon learning of the crash, is reported to have said, "I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane."

Crash

thumb|right|Flight 93 crash site

At 10:03:11, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the plane crashed into a field near a reclaimed coal strip mine known as the Diamond T. Mine owned by PBS Coals in Stonycreek Township in Somerset County. The 757 had between of fuel remaining, which exploded and released a fireball that scorched a nearby hemlock grove. Far-flung debris that made up a third of the aircraft, including the cockpit, continued into the woods, demolishing trees on owned by the Lambert family, and damaging the nearby residence of Barry Hoover. The rest of the aircraft buried itself in dirt that had been transported to the abandoned strip mine for reclamation efforts in the 1990s. The coroner ruled that everyone on board who was still alive at the time of the crash died instantly of blunt-force trauma. Many media reports and eyewitness accounts said the time of the crash was 10:06 or 10:10; an initial analysis of seismographic data in the area concluded that the crash occurred at 10:06, but the 9/11 Commission report states that this analysis was not definitive and was retracted. based on when the flight recorders stopped, analysis of radar data, infrared satellite data, and air traffic control transmissions. Kelly Leverknight, a local resident, was watching news of the attacks when she heard the plane. "I heard the plane going over and I went out the front door and I saw the plane going down. It was headed toward the school, which panicked me, because all three of my kids were there. Then you heard the explosion and felt the blast and saw the fire and smoke." Another witness, Eric Peterson, looked up when he heard the plane, "It was low enough, I thought you could probably count the rivets. You could see more of the roof of the plane than you could the belly. It was on its side. There was a great explosion and you could see the flames. It was a massive, massive explosion. Flames and then smoke and then a massive, massive mushroom cloud."

Val McClatchey had been watching footage of the attacks when she heard the plane. She saw it briefly, then heard the impact. The crash knocked out the electricity and phones. McClatchey grabbed her camera and took the only known picture of the smoke cloud from the explosion. In September 2011, shortly before the 10th anniversary of the attacks, a video of the rising smoke cloud filmed by Dave Berkebile (who had died the previous February) from his yard on Bluebird Lane, away from the crash site, was published on YouTube.

thumb|right|Debris of Flight93 found at crash site. The United Airlines "Battleship Gray" livery used on the aircraft is visible.

The first responders arrived at the crash site after 10:06.

At 10:37, CNN correspondent Aaron Brown, covering the collapse of the World Trade Center, announced, "We are getting reports and we are getting lots of reports and we want to be careful to tell you when we have confirmed them and not, but we have a report that a 747 is down in Pennsylvania, and that remains unconfirmed at this point." He followed that up at 10:49 by reporting "We have a report now that a large plane crashed this morning, north of the Somerset County Airport, which is in western Pennsylvania, not too terribly far from Pittsburgh, about or so, a Boeing 767 jet. Don't know whose airline it was, whose airplane it was, and we don't have any details beyond that which I have just given you." In the confusion, he also erroneously reported a second hijacked plane heading for the Pentagon after the crash of the first.

Aftermath

thumb|DNA recovery at the crash site

thumb|One of United Airlines Flight 93's engines unearthed after the crash

thumb|The cockpit voice recorder found at the scene in [[Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed]]

thumb|The bandana of one of the hijackers

Flight 93 fragmented violently upon impact. Most of the aircraft wreckage was found near the impact crater. Investigators found very light debris including paper and nylon scattered up to eight miles (13km) from the impact point in New Baltimore. Other tiny aircraft fragments were found away at Indian Lake. All human remains were found within a 70-acre (28 ha) area surrounding the impact point. Miller later found and identified 1,500 pieces of human remains totaling about , or eight percent of the total. The rest of the remains were consumed by the impact. Investigators identified four victims by September 22 and eleven by September 24. They identified another by September 29. Thirty-four passengers were identified by October 27.

All the people on board the flight were identified by December 21. Human remains were so fragmented that investigators could not determine whether any victims were dead before the plane crashed. Death certificates for the 40 victims listed the cause of death as homicide and listed the cause of death for the four hijackers as suicide. The remains and personal effects of the victims were returned to the families. The remains of Ziad Jarrah were identified and turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as evidence after DNA samples submitted by his girlfriend were matched to remains recovered in Shanksville. The remains of the other three hijackers were identified by the process of elimination and turned over to the FBI as evidence.

thumb|The flight data recorder found at the scene in [[Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed]]

Investigators also found a knife concealed in a cigarette lighter. They located the flight data recorder on September 13 and the cockpit voice recorder the following day. The voice recorder was found buried below the crater. The FBI initially refused to release the voice recording, rejecting requests by Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher and family members of those on board. While access to voice recordings is usually restricted to government crash investigators and plane crash litigants, the FBI made an exception by allowing the relatives of Flight93 victims to listen to the recording in a closed session on April 18, 2002. Jurors for the Zacarias Moussaoui trial heard the tape as part of the proceedings and the transcript was publicly released on April 12, 2006. , the audio recording has still not been released to the public, due to an "active and ongoing investigation."thumb|First Ladies [[Michelle Obama and Laura Bush survey the crash site on September 11, 2010, the ninth anniversary of the hijacking]]The passengers (excluding the hijackers) and crew on board Flight93 were nominated for the Congressional Gold Medal on September 19, 2001. Congressman Bill Shuster introduced a bill to this effect in 2006, and they were granted on September 11, 2014. The obverse of the Medal is inscribed with "A common field one day, a field of honor forever" and "Act of Congress 2011". The reverse of the Medal features 40 stars (in honor of each of the passengers and crew), a sentinel eagle clasping laurel branches, the western front of the U.S. Capitol, and the inscription "We honor the passengers and crew of Flight 93 who perished in a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001. Their courageous action will be remembered forever."

Beamer's final words, "let's roll", became a national catchphrase. Flight93 has been the subject of various films and documentaries including The Flight That Fought Back, Flight 93, and the feature film United 93. A 60-minute documentary titled I Missed Flight 93 aired on the History Channel around early 2006, featuring interviews with Flight 93 regular Frank Robertazzi; painter Daniel Belardinelli whose uncle, William Cashman, died on the flight; and flight surgeon Heather Ogle who was booked in seat 1A next to Jarrah.

United Airlines retired the flight numbers 93 and 175 after the attacks. It was reported in May 2011 that the company was reactivating them as a codeshare operated by Continental Airlines, sparking an outcry from some in the media and the labor union representing United pilots. United said the numbers had been "inadvertently reinstated" and would not be reactivated. The two setbacks the hijackers faced, totalling 88 minutes combined, meant casualties on the ground would have been minimal even if the plane did reach D.C. The attack on the Pentagon at 09:37 caused the immediate evacuation of all federal government buildings in the area, with the Capitol and the White House being evacuated 28 minutes before Flight 93's earliest projected arrival time of 10:13. Atta briefly mentioned the possibility of striking a nuclear facility, but relented after the other attack pilots voiced their opposition. Based on testimony from captured al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah, U.S. officials believed the White House was the intended target. A post-9/11 interview with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and bin al-Shibh by Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda said Flight93 was heading for the Capitol. The 9/11 Commission Report cited the actions of the crew and passengers in preventing the destruction of either the White House or the Capitol.

Fighter jet response

Two F-16 fighter pilots from the 121st Fighter Squadron of the D.C. Air National Guard, Marc Sasseville and Heather "Lucky" Penney, were scrambled and ordered to intercept Flight 93. The pilots intended to ram it since they did not have time to arm the jets; armed jets ready to take off was not standard at the time of the attack. They never reached Flight 93 and did not learn of its crash until hours afterwards.

A fighter pilot based at Andrews Air Force Base, Billy Hutchison, claimed that while in the air he spotted Flight 93 on his scope and planned to first fire his training rounds into the engine and cockpit, and then ram the airplane with his own jet. His account was published in Lynn Spencer's book Touching History. John Farmer, Senior Counsel to the 9/11 commission, pointed out that this would have been impossible, as Hutchison's squadron was not in the air until 10:38, thirty-five minutes after Flight 93 had crashed. The 9/11 Commission Report stated that NEADS fighters pursued Delta Air Lines Flight 1989, a flight thought to be hijacked.

Memorials

thumb|The [[Flight 93 National Memorial]]

thumb|The [[National September 11 Memorial's South Pool]]

A temporary memorial formed from spontaneous tributes left by visitors in the days after the attacks at the crash site. Foundations across the country began to raise money to fund a memorial to the victims within a month of the crash.

Two years after the attacks, federal officials formed the Flight93 National Memorial Advisory Commission responsible for making design recommendations for a permanent memorial. A national design competition was held to create a public memorial in the Pennsylvania field where Flight93 crashed. The winning design, "Crescent of Embrace", was selected out of a pool of 1,011 submissions on September 7, 2005. The site plan features a large crescent pathway with red maples and sugar maples planted along the outer arc.

This design ran into opposition over funding, size, and appearance. Republican Congressman Charles H. Taylor blocked $10million in federal funds toward the project as he saw it as "unrealistic". Republican Congressional leaders later persuaded him to acquiesce to political pressure and began approving federal funds. The proposed design has also attracted critics who see Islamic symbolism in the crescent design.

On August 31, 2009, an agreement was announced between the landowners and the National Park Service to allow the purchase of land for $9.5million. The memorial area with a white marble Wall of Names was dedicated on September 10, 2011, the day before the 10th anniversary of the crash.

CeeCee Lyles was one of the flight attendants on board. In 2003, a statue of Lyles was unveiled in her hometown of Fort Pierce, Florida, which has since gained national recognition as one of the many monuments to the attacks. On August 9, 2007, a portion of U.S.219 in Somerset County, near the Flight 93 National Memorial, was co-signed as the Flight 93 Memorial Highway. At the National September 11 Memorial, the names of the victims of Flight93 are inscribed on Panels S-67 and S-68 at the South Pool.

On the sixteenth anniversary of the crash, Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the memorial: "Without regard to personal safety, they [the victims] rushed forward to save [our] lives... I will always believe that I and many others in our nation's capital were able to go home that day and hug our families because of the courage and sacrifice of the heroes of Flight93."

On June 21, 2018, the remaining wreckage of Flight 93, which had been stored in shipping containers in a warehouse since the crash, was buried at the crash site in a private ceremony. Prior to the ceremony, the wreckage was hand-searched for personal effects and human remains that might have been missed in years prior.

Victims

The passengers (excluding the hijackers) and crew were from:

{|class="wikitable"

|- style="background:#ccf;"

!|Nationality|||Passengers|||Crew|||Total

|- valign=top

|||30||7||37

|- valign=top

|||1||0||1

|- valign=top

|||1||0||1

|- valign=top

|||1||0||1

|- valign=top

! Total

! 33

! 7

! 40

Notes

References

External links

United Airlines Flight #93 Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript from CNN. (Archive from CNN; Archive at webcitation.org)
Flight 93 National Memorial Campaign (official website)

Hijackers

Flight

Boarding

Hijacking

Passenger revolt

Crash

Aftermath

Fighter jet response

Memorials

Victims

Notes

References

Further reading

External links