(from Jere Longman,
Among the Heroes: United Flight 93
and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back)
IN HIS TORA BORA redoubt in Afghanistan Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, sat listening to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks. While in the Philippines in 1994–95, Mohammed had participated in a plan to blow up twelve Western airliners simultaneously. That plot was foiled by the arrest of its two ringleaders. Now in 1996 Mohammed sought bin Laden’s support and financial aid to enact the same plan in the United States. His concept was to simultaneously hijack five airplanes on the East Coast and hit targets in New York and Washington, D.C., and hijack five airplanes on the West Coast, headed for Asia, and blow these up over the Pacific. Bin Laden bought the idea that a large, transcontinental airplane, fully loaded with fuel and piloted by a pilot bent on suicide, was a made-to-order flying missile of great precision. In 1998 Mohammed received bin Laden’s blessing to begin plotting the September 11 attacks, which would kill nearly three thousand civilians on American soil.
In 1999 Bin Laden offered Mohammed four operators; they trained in Afghanistan in commando tactics and how to blend in to American society, which they did—even taking lessons on how to fly commercial aircraft. The “muscle men” had to be selected and trained too. In the spring of 2000, Bin Laden canceled the idea of further hijackings in eastern Asia to concentrate on the United States. By September 11, 2001, the men were in place and armed with box cutters. The timeline of that tragic day:
7:59 A.M. American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew, departs from Boston bound for Los Angeles. It is hijacked fourteen minutes later and at 8:46 A.M. crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center between the ninety-fourth and ninety-eighth floors at a speed of 490 miles per hour.
8:14 A.M. United Airlines Flight 175, a full-fueled Boeing 767 with 65 passengers and 9 crew members, takes off from Boston for Los Angeles. The hijackers seize the plane at 8:42 A.M. and slam it into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 A.M. at 590 miles per hour. About 2,600 occupants die in the two towers.
8:20 A.M. American Flight 77, a Boeing 757 with 58 passengers and 6 crew, departs from Virginia’s Washington-Dulles Airport for Los Angeles. At 9:37 American Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, where 125 military are killed.
8:42 A.M. United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757, takes off from Newark, New Jersey, after a forty-minute delay, bound for San Francisco with 37 passengers and 7 crew. At 9:28 it is hijacked, and at 10:03 A.M. it crashes.
From New York Times reporter Jere Longman’s 2002 account, Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back, here is the full story of Flight 93, whose passengers rallied against the terrorists and, at the cost of their own lives, saved the country from another horrific bombing.
THE SKY ON SEPTEMBER 11 dawned cerulean blue—rinsed, cloudless, apparently cleansed of tumult. It was just after Labor Day. School was in session, and autumn had arrived in New York City.
Dressed in his navy-blue uniform, Capt. Jason Dahl, 43, entered United Airlines’ flight operations center at Newark International Airport at about 7 A.M. He logged on to a computer and verified his schedule. Flight 93 was scheduled to depart at one minute after eight. Dahl signed a release for the plane, a Boeing 757, placing it in his control. Then he met LeRoy Homer, Jr., the first officer on Flight 93. The two men had not flown together before but they had one thing in common: this was the only job they ever really wanted.
Boarding the plane, Dahl checked the cockpit, ensured that the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were functioning, and examined the engine instrument indicators. After entering his destination into the computerized flight management system, Dahl met with Deborah Welsh, the flight attendant in charge, also known as the purser. The two spoke about security. Up to an altitude of 10,000 feet, the cockpit was to remain sterile—no one could enter. Dahl and Welsh also established the secret knock sequence she would use before entering the cockpit.
In the event of a hijacking, pilots and flight attendants had been taught passive compliance. The United flight attendants’ manual advised: “Be persuasive to stay alive. Delay. Let the hijackers select a liaison. Do not challenge their power. Use eye contact to calm and reduce anxiety.” This advice was based on old rules that would soon no longer apply. Rules that were mortally inadequate. Rules that did not anticipate the use of planes as suicide missiles. Advice to remain unthreatening would not work against a knife at the throat and an intent at martyrdom.
In a taxi on his way to the airport, Tom Burnett left a voicemail for his boss. There was room on United Flight 93 to San Francisco, he said, so he would be leaving at 8 A.M. instead of 9:20, on Flight 91. He would get home early to see his wife, Deena, and their three young daughters in San Ramon, Calif. Tom was chief operating officer of Thoratec Corporation, a leading manufacturer of heart pumps for patients awaiting transplants.
At 7:20 A.M., a United agent at Gate 17 made the first boarding call for Flight 93. Thirty-eight-year-old Lauren Grandcolas, a marketing executive, called her husband, Jack, in San Rafael, Calif. With the three-hour time difference, he was still in bed, so she left a message. Her car service had arrived early. “Just want to let you know I’m on the 8:00 instead of the 9:20,” she said.
At 7:33, as he waited in the boarding area, Todd Beamer of Cranbury, N.J., got a call on his cell phone. It was his colleague Jonathan Oomrigar, a vice president at Oracle software, where Todd was a top account manager. Todd had generated $33 million worth of business the last fiscal year, blowing out all the numbers. Six months earlier, he had put together Oracle’s largest deal ever with Sony’s semiconductor division. He and Oomrigar had an important meeting today at headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif. A top Sony executive was flying in from Japan to discuss a possible new deal.
Flight attendants Lorraine Bay and Wanda Green were standing inside the doorway at row eight, greeting passengers as they boarded. The ten passengers traveling in first class were guided down the aisle to their left. The 27 traveling in coach were ushered down the aisle to the right.
Deborah Welsh now began making her way through the forward cabin, asking if she could hang up suit coats and jackets. Four Middle Eastern men were among those in first class. Ziad Jarrah took seat 1B, first-row aisle, close to the cockpit. Ahmed al-Haznawi, Saeed al-Ghamdi and Ahmed al-Nami sat in 3C, 3D and 6B, which was in the last row of first class.
At six feet tall, Debbie Welsh could be an assertive personality. In her Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in New York City, she had become an activist for pedestrian rights after a neighbor’s mother had been struck by a bicyclist and died of complications from a broken hip.
Mark Bingham was the last passenger to board Flight 93. He had been driven to the airport by his friend Matt Hall. Mark ran a public relations firm that had an office in San Francisco and another in New York City. He was flying to the West Coast for a business meeting and a weekend wedding. Mark sat in seat 4D, in the same row as Tom Burnett.
Soon everyone was seated, and the door closed and sealed. Only 37 passengers were on the plane. Captain Dahl now asked for authorization to depart the gate. It was about 8 A.M.
American Airlines Flight 11, meanwhile, was leaving from Boston’s Logan Airport for a flight to L.A. The Boeing 767 was instructed to climb to 35,000 feet, but the plane climbed to only 29,000 feet and then halted radio contact.
At 8:24, a voice thought to be that of the terrorist Mohamed Atta, who apparently believed he was speaking to the passengers, was overheard by air traffic controllers: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you will be okay. We are returning to the airport. Nobody move, everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourselves and the airplane.”
The Boston air control tower alerted air traffic centers that Flight 11 had been hijacked. Several minutes later, the Boeing 767 made a turn that took the shape of a shark’s fin and headed south for Manhattan. At 8:34, a hijacker spoke again: “Nobody move, please; we are going back to the airport. Don’t try to make any stupid moves.”
The pilots, flight attendants and passengers on United Flight 93 were unaware of the trouble aboard American Flight 11. They were also unaware that the four Middle Eastern men sitting in first class were confederates of Mohamed Atta’s.
On a videotape made perhaps six months earlier, a man identified as Ahmed al-Haznawi said, “We left our families to send a message that has the color of blood. This message says, ‘Oh, Allah, take from our blood today until you are satisfied. The time of humiliation and subjugation is over.’ It is time to kill Americans in their homeland, among their sons, near their forces and intelligence.”
By September 11, the four Islamic men were to have showered, shaved and splashed themselves with cologne. They should have blessed their bodies by reading the Koran. They should have also blessed their luggage, clothes, knives, passports and papers. They were to have remembered that “this is a battle for the sake of God.” When the airplane took off, they were to pray for victory over the infidels and say, “May the ground shake under their feet.”
When the confrontation came, they were to clench their teeth and “strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world.” They had been told, “Strike for God’s sake. Take prisoners and kill them.”
The terrorists intending to hijack four flights this morning had done their homework. They had apparently taken rehearsal trips and armed themselves with low-tech weapons that would not be detected or confiscated. The hijackers on Flight 93 had at least one box cutter—legal to carry aboard—and another cutting device that seemed homemade, a piece of metal wrapped in tape.
The Monday rush of businessmen and tourists was over. Tuesday was a light travel day. There were fewer passengers to confront and maximum fuel to detonate on a scheduled cross-country flight. It was Tuesday, September eleventh. 9/11. 9-1-1. National Emergency Day.
Flight 93 fell into a line of about a dozen planes taxiing toward the runway. When he reached the front for takeoff, Captain Dahl was instructed by the Newark control tower, “United 93, you are cleared to position, hold on runway four left.”
“Roger, position hold, four left.”
And finally: “United 93, you’re cleared for takeoff, runway four left.”
The flight attendants were seated. Deborah Welsh took a jump seat in first class, while Lorraine Bay and Wanda Green took the jump seats at the door between first class and coach. The other two attendants, CeeCee Lyles and Sandra Bradshaw, were sitting in the rear galley.
With the 36,600-pound thrust of its twin Pratt & Whitney engines, Flight 93 roared down the runway, the nose wheels lifting and the rest of the plane leaving the ground with a swooping weightlessness. It was 8:42 A.M. The plane went northeast on a 40-degree heading, turned another 20 degrees to the right and followed this path for four miles toward Manhattan. It held to an altitude of 2500 feet and then banked gracefully, nearly due west. To the right, the towers of the World Trade Center were visible in the metallic shimmer of early morning.
Five minutes later, American Flight 11 rammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at nearly 500 miles an hour. Not long after, at 9:03 A.M., United Flight 175 sliced into the South Tower, a deadly scythe, and sent up a mushrooming explosion.
United Flight 93 now climbed past 23,000 feet. The Boeing 757 soon reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, its flight path to San Francisco appearing as a magenta line on a cockpit computer screen. Captain Dahl trimmed the plane, stabilizing it along all three axes, and turned on the autopilot.
Once it became evident that Flight 175 had been hijacked, the United flight operations center began alerting all of its flights. The dispatchers began firing off messages: “Beware cockpit intrusion.” “Confirm operations are normal.” The alert was sent to United Flight 93 via a cockpit computer device called ACARS, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. The warning arrived as a kind of e-mail, making a chiming sound.
“Confirmed,” United 93 answered, the one-word response typed on a computer-screen keypad.
As Flight 93 approached the Cleveland center—a regional air traffic center that guided long-range, high-altitude flights—one of the pilots reported in with a chipper “Good morning.” While pilots on other flights asked in a puzzled way about problems in New York, Flight 93 did not. Then came an interruption, an indeterminate rush in the cockpit, a screaming of “Hey” and violent non-words, high-pitched and muffled exertion, the rustling of surprise and ominous resolve.
An air traffic controller was startled by what he heard. “Did somebody call Cleveland?” he asked.
Silence followed, and then either Captain Dahl or First Officer Homer had the presence of mind to hit an audio button. The cockpit scuffle played desperately over the air traffic control frequency. More yelling, an American voice in a bloodcurdling scream, “Get out of here.” Then the same scream again, this time sounding wounded and pleading. And then “Get out of here” again, an angry, unheeded order.
The controller at Cleveland center sounded alarmed and asked Flight 93 to verify its altitude. No reply. Another call to verify. More silence, the plane heading westward into a threatening unknown.
“United 93, Cleveland,” the controller said, raising his voice. “United 93, if you hear Cleveland, ident please.”
The Cleveland center called to another aircraft in the area, United Flight 1523: “Did you hear interference on the frequency, screaming?”
“Yes, I did,” the pilot replied.
“Okay,” Cleveland said. “United 93, if you hear the center, ident.”
Then, from American 1060: “Ditto on the other transmission.”
Cleveland: “American 1060, you heard that also?”
“Yes, sir, twice.”
“Roger, thanks,” Cleveland said. “I just wanted to confirm it wasn’t some interference.”
It was 9:32 A.M. The hijackers had control of Flight 93 now and were out of breath from subduing the pilots. “Ladies and gentlemen here, it’s the captain,” one of the terrorists said, apparently believing he was speaking to the passengers but broadcasting instead over the air traffic control frequency. “Please sit down. We have a bomb aboard.”
The voice had a panting formality, an odd pleasantness. “Please sit down,” the man asked again. This was believed to be the voice of Ziad Jarrah, a 26-year-old from Lebanon. He had entered the United States in June 2000 and immersed himself into transient, touristy, racially diverse South Florida so thoroughly that he seemed no more out of place than the humidity. His skin was so light, his appearance so blandly handsome, that some thought him European instead of Arabic.
In the weeks before September 11, Jarrah had lived in Florida with Ahmed al-Haznawi, another suspected terrorist aboard United Flight 93. Earlier in the summer, all four of the hijackers on the flight opened Florida SunTrust bank accounts with cash deposits.
As did terrorists on the other suicide flights, Jarrah traveled to Las Vegas over the summer and studied self-defense. He lived near other hijackers in South Florida, training at nearby flight schools. But because al Qaeda cells operated with murkiness, the overlapping contact was flimsy and difficult to detect. The terrorists knew they were participating in a “martyrdom operation,” but they did not know its precise nature until shortly before boarding the planes, according to a tape that was later released by the Defense Department.
Flight 93 now turned directly toward Washington, perhaps toward the U.S. Capitol, its neoclassical dome standing nearly 300 feet above the ground. The hijacker had made a bomb threat. Commercial pilots on Jarrah’s frequency, along with the air traffic controllers directing them from Cleveland, could not believe the chilling words they heard.
Cleveland center: “You’re unreadable. Say again, slowly.”
Jarrah spoke once more. “Hi, this is the captain. We’d like you all to remain seated. There is a bomb aboard. And we are going to turn back to the airport. And they have our demands, so please remain quiet.”
Cleveland began ordering other jets to turn away from Flight 93.
“United 93, do you hear Cleveland center?” asked Cleveland.
There was no answer. The plane’s transponder had been shut off, so neither the air traffic center in Cleveland nor United’s operations center in Chicago could determine Flight 93’s altitude.
Cleveland asked the pilot of another plane, Executive Jet 956, if he could change course and attempt to visually spot Flight 93. The pilot saw it, lost it, and saw it again. Then it was headed right for him, causing him to make an evasive turn.
“United 93, do you still hear the center?” asked Cleveland. “United 93, do you hear Cleveland?”
Twenty more times the controller would call Flight 93. And twenty times he would get no response.
In San Ramon, Calif., Deena Burnett awoke to get her three daughters ready for school. Deena went downstairs and turned on the television to check the weather. Every channel was carrying urgent news about the World Trade Center being hit by an airplane.
What about Tom? Deena thought. He was on his way home from New York. As she watched, a second plane rammed the World Trade Center. Then the phone rang. It was Tom’s mother, Beverly, calling from Bloomington, Minn. As they spoke, the call waiting on Deena’s phone beeped. It was her husband, calling from his cell phone.
“Tom,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he replied. “I’m on United Flight 93 from Newark. The plane has been hijacked. They already knifed a guy. One of them has a gun. They’re saying there is a bomb on board. Please call the authorities.” And he hung up.
Deena scribbled down what he’d said and noted the time: 6:27, 9:27 in the East. Tom had spoken quietly, quickly. A guy had been knifed, he said. Deena assumed Tom meant a passenger, and she had asked him before he hung up. He confirmed that, yes, it was a passenger.
Sheer terror now coursed through Deena’s body. What do I do? Who do I call for a hijacking? Dial 911. Maybe they’ll know who to call.
She dialed and was transferred to the police and then to the FBI. She was telling an agent her husband’s flight number and destination when her call waiting interrupted again. It was Tom. Again, Deena noted the time: 6:34, 9:34 in the East.
“They’re in the cockpit,” Tom said.
The man who had been knifed was dead. Tom had tried to help but felt no pulse. Deena told him what she knew, that planes were hitting the World Trade Center. Terrorists seemed to be hitting designated targets. Immediately Tom pieced things together. “Oh, my God,” he said. “It’s a suicide mission.”
Deena heard Tom relaying the information to someone else. Were commercial airlines being hijacked? Tom asked her. How many planes? Who was involved? Deena gave him what little information she had. His plane seemed to be turning east, Tom reported. Then he said, “Wait, wait…We’re going south.”
What could he see? Deena asked. It was a rural area, just fields. “I’ve got to go,” he said. Deena called the FBI again. Things would work out. We have a perfect life. A good job, great kids, health. Nothing bad ever happens to us. Then the television reported that the Pentagon had been hit. It must be Tom’s plane. Deena sat down and started wailing, a keening despair strange and full of loss.
The phone rang again. It was Tom a third time. It was 6:45, 9:45 in the East. For a fleeting second Deena thought Tom had miraculously survived the crash into the Pentagon.
“Tom, you’re okay?” she asked.
“No, I’m not,” he said.
A third plane had hit the Pentagon, she told him. He repeated this to others. The planes seemed to be commercial airliners originating in the East, Deena said. Had she called the authorities? Yes, Deena said. “They didn’t seem to know anything about your plane.” The hijackers, Tom said, were talking about crashing the plane into the ground. “We have to do something.” He and others were making a plan. “A group of us. Don’t worry,” he told Deena, “I’ll call you back.”
Tom had not spoken elaborately in his phone calls. He wasn’t whispering sweet nothings of farewell. He was making a plan to get home safely to his wife and three children. Deena couldn’t accept that he was going to die. We are the golden couple. Everything good was showered on us. Nothing bad ever happened.
Tom then called a fourth time. It was 6:54, 9:54 in the East. He asked about their daughters. They wanted to talk to him, Deena said. Tom said he would talk to them later. He and others had come up with a plan to regain control of the plane over a rural area. “We have to do something,” he said. There was no time to wait for the authorities. “It’s up to us. I think we can do it…Pray, Deena, just pray.”
“I love you,” Deena said.
“Don’t worry,” Tom said. Then, “We’re going to do something.”
If anyone could formulate a plan, organize a team of people, it was Lauren Grandcolas, seated in row 11. She had spent a career in marketing and advertising, most recently for Good Housekeeping. In her spare time she volunteered at AIDS walks and adopt-a-kid programs. She was also a certified emergency medical technician.
When her husband, Jack, awoke on September 11, he looked out the window and felt a kind of oddness. The clouds seemed to have strange shapes. He turned the television to ESPN and then switched to the news. He sat there horrified. Planes had flown into the World Trade Center. When he saw that other planes had been grounded, he felt certain Lauren would be safe. Her flight was not due to take off until 9:20. Then Lauren’s sister, Vaughn, called him. “Have you heard from Lauren?” she asked. “We need to find out where she is.” Lauren had taken an earlier flight, Vaughn told him.
“You’re kidding me,” Jack said.
He went downstairs to the kitchen and saw two messages on the machine. The first said she would be home early. In the second message, Lauren seemed calm and hopeful, yet there was urgency in her voice. “Honey, are you there? Jack, pick up, sweetie,” Lauren said from Flight 93. “Okay, well, I just wanted to tell you I love you. We’re having a little problem on the plane. I love you more than anything, just know that. I’m comfortable and I’m okay for now. I’ll—I—just a little problem. I love you. Please tell my family I love them too. Bye, honey.”
Jack was overwhelmed and could barely speak. He dropped to his knees. “No, my God, no.”
Mark Bingham called his mother, Alice Hogian, and told her that he loved her. It was not unusual for Mark to call Alice to express his love, but it was unusual for him to do it at 6:44 in the morning. His voice sounded both controlled and rattled. “I’m on a flight from Newark to San Francisco,” Mark told her. “There are three guys aboard who say they have a bomb.”
“Who are these guys, Mark?”
A long pause. Mark said he was calling from an Airfone. He was probably in first class, Alice thought, and the hijackers were probably up there. She worried that he was drawing attention to himself, making himself a target. Then the line went dead. Alice saw the television and understood. She felt that Mark knew what he was up against, that the situation was dire and he was calling to say goodbye.
Alice dialed Mark’s cell phone number. Later, she would retrieve her message from the phone company. “Mark, this is your mom,” she said. “The news is that [the plane has] been hijacked by terrorists. I would say, Go ahead and do everything you can to overpower them, because they’re hell-bent. Okay, I love you, sweetie. Goodbye.”
In Catonsville, Md., Esther Heymann was speaking to her husband, Ben Wainio, vice president of First Union Bank in nearby Columbia. Anxious calls had been coming in full of worry and uncertainty. The call-waiting signal clicked and Heymann put her husband on hold. Her stepdaughter, Elizabeth Wainio, was on the other line. It was about 9:50.
“Hello, Mom,” Elizabeth said. “We’re being hijacked. I’m calling to say goodbye.” Esther knew her stepdaughter was flying. They had spoken before the plane had left Newark. If she heard Elizabeth’s voice again this morning, Esther knew what it would mean.
“Do you know what’s going on?” the younger woman asked.
“No,” Esther said. Her first thought was to comfort her daughter, not alarm her. If Elizabeth wanted to talk about what was happening aboard the plane, that was her choice.
This “really nice person” sitting next to her, perhaps Lauren Grandcolas, had given her the phone to call her family, Elizabeth said. Elizabeth spoke calmly, but her breathing was shallow.
“Elizabeth, I’ve got my arms around you. I’m holding you and I love you,” Esther told her daughter.
“I can feel your arms around me,” Elizabeth said. “And I love you too.”
Esther looked out the window in her bedroom. She told her daughter to hold the hand of the nice person beside her. Elizabeth spoke about each person in her family and said how much she loved them. She worried about how her older brother, Tom, and her younger sister, Sarah, would handle this terrible news.
“Let’s just be here in the present,” Esther said. “Let’s look out at the beautiful blue sky and take a few deep breaths.” With that, Elizabeth’s breathing seemed to grow deeper and more relaxed.
The hijackers apparently did little to prevent the passengers and flight attendants from making phone calls. People spoke nervously but freely. Perhaps, with so few hijackers trying to control so many passengers, the terrorists considered it too risky to intervene. And perhaps the passengers in the rear of the plane were being only loosely watched or left unattended.
Still, none of the calls mentioned one critical element. If the passengers were able to overpower the hijackers and regain control of the plane, who would fly it? Had the pilot and copilot been killed by the hijackers? Were they still alive? There was no way to know conclusively.
Unlike the other hijacked planes, Flight 93’s navigational system was apparently reprogrammed from its original destination to Reagan National Airport, providing the Boeing 757 with steering coordinates toward Washington. Yet Flight 93 had descended to less than 10,000 feet, not even two miles above ground. Either it was trying to fly below radar, as investigators theorized, or it was navigating clumsily due to inadequately trained hijacker pilots.
At 9:45, Todd Beamer reached an Airfone operator in Oak Brook, Ill. The operator took the call, but the news of a hijacking apparently traumatized her, so she handed off the call to Lisa D. Jefferson, a supervisor with 17 years of experience and a soft, reassuring voice. “I understand this plane is being hijacked,” Lisa Jefferson said to the caller. “Please give me detailed information as to what’s going on.”
Todd Beamer introduced himself. Speaking in a calm voice, he said that three people had hijacked the plane. Two with knives went into the cockpit and locked the door. The third person stood in first class with what appeared to be a bomb strapped to his waist. He ordered everyone to sit down; then he closed the curtain between first class and coach. Ten people were in first class, 27 were in coach, and there were five flight attendants, Todd told her.
Two people were lying on the floor in first class, Todd said. He did not know if they were still alive. Lisa Jefferson overheard a flight attendant tell Todd that the men on the floor were the captain and co-captain. She seemed certain, and Todd repeated this information. If he felt his life was threatened, Jefferson said, he could lay the phone down. Just don’t hang up, she said to him. Keep the line open. Todd said he was fine, free to talk.
“Do you know what they want?” Todd asked her. “Money or ransom or what?” He seemed confused.
“I don’t know,” Jefferson said.
Then Todd’s voice rose a bit. “We’re going down, we’re going down. No, wait, we’re coming back up. We’re turning around. I think we’re going north.”
It was disorienting; he didn’t know where they were going. “Oh, Jesus, please help us,” Todd said. He asked Jefferson to say the Lord’s Prayer with him. They did, and then Todd began the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…”
The plane seemed to take another dive, and nervousness came back into Todd’s voice. “Oh, God,” he said. “Lisa.”
The operator thought this was odd. She had introduced herself as Mrs. Jefferson and had not given Todd her first name. “Yes?” she said.
“That’s my wife’s name.”
“Oh, that’s my name too,” Lisa Jefferson said.
“Oh, my God,” Todd said of the coincidence.
He told her about his family, his two young sons, David and Andrew, and his wife, who was expecting a third baby. He had thought about calling Lisa but did not want to upset her if he didn’t have to. “If I don’t make it out of this, would you please call my family and let them know how much I love them?” Todd asked Jefferson. Of course, she said.
The plane moved erratically now, and Todd thought he’d lost contact with the operator. “Lisa, Lisa,” he hollered into the phone.
“I’m still here, Todd,” she said. “I’ll be here as long as you will.”
He said that he and a few passengers were going to “jump” the hijacker with the bomb and try to regain control of the plane.
“I stand behind you,” Jefferson told him.
Then, in the background, Jefferson heard an “awful commotion,” men’s voices raised and hollering and women screaming, “Oh, my God,” “God help us,” and “Help us, Jesus.”
Afterward Todd seemed to turn away from the phone to speak with someone else. “You ready?” he said to someone. “Okay. Let’s roll.”
Flight 93 descended to the southeast. Rodney Peterson and Brandon Leventry, auto mechanics in Boswell, Pa., were crossing Main Street in this former mining town at about 10 A.M. when they saw a jetliner lumbering through the sky at about 2000 feet.
Peterson had worked previously at an airport and was familiar with flight patterns. He knew that jetliners generally approached nearby Johnstown airport at a much higher altitude. “Check that plane out,” he said to Leventry.
Then the plane did something odd. It dipped its wings sharply to the left, then to the right. “Something ain’t right,” Peterson said.
The wings leveled off but the plane was headed southward. Peterson broke into a run, trying to follow the plane up Main Street. But the jetliner disappeared over a line of trees and houses. “If they were fighting with the hijackers, I guarantee it happened right here,” Peterson said later. It dipped left and dipped right. No plane that big flies like that.”
Much of what happened in the final minutes of the flight falls into conjecture, officials say. No clear determination was provided by the voice recorder, which operated on a 30-minute loop and taped remarks using microphones in the pilots’ headsets and in the cockpit ceiling. Still, family members later said they were provided an encouraging scenario when they heard the voice recorder tape: Federal prosecutors in the upcoming trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, said to be the intended 20th hijacker, proposed that the passengers used a food cart as a battering ram to enter the cockpit, even if they were ultimately unable to save a plane that was flying too low and fast and turning upside down.
The final loop on the voice recorder tape began at 9:31. Near the beginning, an accented voice in English ordered someone to sit down. A voice implored in English, “Don’t, don’t.” A woman pleaded not to be hurt or killed, saying, “Please, please.”
After the plane was hijacked, at least one flight attendant pressed a code on an Airfone and reached a United office in San Francisco, airline officials said. She reported that one hijacker was holding the crew at knifepoint. Evidence that at least one flight attendant was bound by the hands would turn up at the World Trade Center; the same method of restraint was suspected on Flight 93.
Patrick Welsh, husband of purser Deborah Welsh, said he was told by United that one flight attendant was stabbed early in the takeover. Presumably, this was learned from a call to United. It was “strongly implied,” he said, that his wife had been a victim, given her position in first class. “Knowing Debbie, she would have resisted,” Patrick said.
An alarm sounded when the autopilot was disconnected. An alarm also would have sounded because the plane was traveling at 575 miles an hour in the final minutes, far exceeding the design limits of 425 miles an hour below 20,000 feet and the regulated limit of 287 miles an hour below 10,000 feet. It could have even broken the sound barrier for a while, according to Hank Krakowski, head of United’s flight operations control in Chicago on September 11. The apparent maneuvering of hydraulics could also be heard, along with the rushing of wind close to the ground.
The fate of the pilots, Jason Dahl and LeRoy Homer, Jr., could not be clearly determined. About midway through the tape, one hijacker said to another, “Let the guys in now,” apparently referring to other terrorists entering the cockpit. A vague instruction was given to bring the pilot back in. What this meant is not known. Was one of the United pilots needed to shut off the autopilot’s alarm or to set a new course? Was the body of one of the pilots to be brought into the cockpit?
Flight 93 continued in trouble as it flew over U.S. Highway 30, now 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The morning fog was just burning off as Terry Buder worked among the metal carcasses at Stoys-town Auto Wreckers. When Butler heard a loud rumbling sound, he looked toward the mountains. Then he turned and saw the United jet flying above a house. It seemed to be only 500 feet above the ground now.
No big plane flies that low around here, he thought. It will hit a tree.
The plane skimmed over a ridge, made a sharp right turn and began to roll over on its side. Several miles away, truck driver Rob Kimmel saw the jetliner fly overhead, banking hard to the right. It was only 100, 200 feet off the ground as it crested a hill. “I saw the top of the plane, not the bottom,” Kimmel said.
Lee Purbaugh didn’t hear the plane until it was nearly on top of him. He was working at the Rollock scrap metal company, standing on a bluff overlooking a reclaimed strip mine. The Boeing 757 flew over his head, 40 or 50 feet above him, he estimated, so close that the bottom of the plane seemed a tan color as it reflected the fields below.
The plane was hurtling along at nearly 600 miles an hour. According to investigators, the jetliner rolled onto its back. Then it made a fatal, sharp tilt and dived, one wing and the nose of the plane hitting with an awkward crumpling. The plane seemed swallowed in flames, there was an explosion, and a dark cloud mushroomed. It was just after 10:00.
Twenty minutes longer, and Flight 93 would have reached Washington in a finale of suicidal fireworks.
Six days after the crash, families of the passengers and crew members gathered on a bluff above the soft, cratered soil where Flight 93 had been entombed. They cried and prayed and left remembrances of their loved ones, flowers, photographs.
In his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, President George W. Bush said, “None of us would ever wish the evil that was done on September the eleventh. Yet after America was attacked, it was as if our entire country looked into a mirror and saw our better selves. We were reminded that we are citizens, with obligations to each other, to our country and to history. We began to think less of the goods we can accumulate and more about the good we can do. For too long our culture has said, ‘If it feels good, do it.’ Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: ‘Let’s roll.’ ”
Jack Grandcolas, the husband of Lauren Grandcolas, said of the passengers: “They were the ultimate patriots. They did the most democratic thing they could do. They gathered information, they voted to do something. They knew there’s a ninety-eight percent chance we’re not going to make it, but let’s save others. That’s what Americans are all about. Lauren’s bravery has given me hope. All their bravery has given me hope.”