United Airlines Flight 93 was an American domestic passenger flight from Newark International Airport in New Jersey to San Francisco International Airport in California that was hijacked by four al-Qaeda terrorists on the morning of September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. The hijackers intended to crash the plane into a federal government building in Washington, D.C. However, their plan failed when passengers and crew members revolted in an attempt to regain control of the plane. As a result of the ensuing struggle, the terrorists crashed the plane into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all 44 aboard the flight.
Forty-six minutes after the Boeing 757 took off at 8:42 a.m. EDT, the hijackers killed one passenger, stormed the cockpit, struggled with the pilots as controllers on the ground listened in, and moved the remaining passengers and crew members to the rear of the aircraft. Lead hijacker 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 planners of the attacks, have claimed that the intended target was the U.S. Capitol Building, though government officials also state that the intended target alternatively may have been the White House.
Meanwhile, as passengers and crew members began calling ground contacts and family members to relay information on the hijacking, they discovered the hijackers' intentions. Because the flight's takeoff had been delayed by 42 minutes and the hijacking began 46 minutes after that, it allowed them to learn through these calls that other hijacked planes had already carried out suicide attacks against the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon shortly before. Realizing that their flight was likely being hijacked as part of a suicide mission, they decided to fight back. In the ensuing struggle, Jarrah chose to prevent the passengers from taking over the controls by nosediving and crashing the plane into a field near a reclaimed strip mine in Stonycreek Township, near Shanksville, about 65 miles (105 km) southeast of Pittsburgh and 130 miles (210 km) northwest of the capital at 10:03 a.m. A witness reported the crash, and news agencies began reporting on the event within an hour.
Flight 93 was the fourth and final passenger jet to be commandeered by terrorists on September 11 and the only one that did not reach a target intended by al-Qaeda. The hijacking was supposed to be coordinated with that of American Airlines Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon 26 minutes before the crash of Flight 93. A temporary memorial was built near the crash site soon after the attacks. 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.
In May, Jarrah received a visa from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, 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 Flight 93. 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 June 8 with Flight 11 hijacker Wail al-Shehri. The third, Saeed al-Ghamdi, arrived in Orlando, Florida, on June 27 with Flight 175 hijacker Fayez Banihammad. Ziad Jarrah's and Saeed al-Ghamdi's passports were recovered from the Flight 93 crash site. Jarrah's family said he had been an "innocent passenger" aboard 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 N591UA delivered to United Airlines in 1996. The airplane had a capacity of 182 passengers. The September 11 flight carried 37 passengers, including the four terrorists, and seven crew members, with a load factor of 20 percent, considerably below the 52 percent average Tuesday load factor for Flight 93. 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
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, a similar correspondence did not take place between Jarrah and Hani Hanjour, the hijacker pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, with which the hijacking of Flight 93 was to be executed in tandem.
The four hijackers checked in for the flight between 07:03 and 07:39 Eastern Time. At 07:03, al-Ghamdi checked in without any luggage while al-Nami checked in two bags. At 07:24, al-Haznawi checked in one bag and at 07:39, Jarrah checked in without any luggage. Al-Haznawi was the only hijacker selected for extra scrutiny by the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS). His checked bag underwent extra screening for explosives, with no extra scrutiny required by CAPPS at the passenger-security checkpoint. 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. Many of those aboard Flight 93 would have had a view of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, located several miles away across the Hudson River. The aircraft was scheduled to depart at 08:00 and pushed back from gate A17 at 08:01. It remained delayed on the ground until 08:42 because of heavy airport congestion.
Hijack warnings issued
The three other hijacked flights all departed within fifteen minutes of their scheduled times. By the time Flight 93 became airborne, Flight 11 was within four minutes of crashing into the North Tower and Flight 175 was being hijacked. The terrorists aboard Flight 77 had not yet made their move, but were nine minutes away from storming the cockpit. At 09:02, one minute before Flight 175 hit the South Tower, Flight 93 reached its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet (11,000 m).
With the attacks unfolding, air traffic officials began issuing warnings through the Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS). Ed Ballinger, the United flight dispatcher, began sending text cockpit warnings to United Airlines flights at 09:19, sixteen minutes after Flight 175's impact. Ballinger was responsible for multiple flights, and he sent the message to Flight 93 at 09:23. Ballinger received a routine ACARS message from Flight 93 at 09:21.
At 09:22, after learning of the events at the World Trade Center, LeRoy Homer's wife, Melodie Homer, had an ACARS message sent to her husband in the cockpit asking if he was all right. At 09:24, Flight 93 received Ballinger's ACARS warning, "Beware any cockpit intrusion – two 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" (meaning: "Ed, confirm your latest message please - Jason"). At 09:27:25, the flight crew responded to routine radio traffic from air traffic control. This was the last communication made by the flight crew before the plane was hijacked.
Hijacking
The cockpit was breached at 09:28, by which point Flights 11 and 175 had 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. It is unknown why the hijackers on Flight 93 waited 46 minutes to storm the cockpit. The evidence is that they attacked the pilots by at least 09:28:05, because the flight dived dramatically at that point – roughly 685 feet in thirty seconds.
Cockpit transmissions and recordings
At 09:28:17, ATC employees at Cleveland and the pilots of aircraft in Flight 93's vicinity picked up on "unintelligible sounds of possible screaming or a struggle". A Cleveland air traffic controller replied, "Somebody call Cleveland?" but received no response. Thirty-five seconds later, the aircraft made another transmission. In both calls, a man was shouting, "Mayday! Mayday! Get out of here! We're all gonna die here!" When Melodie Homer and Sandy Dahl, both pilots' widows, listened to the tape, Melodie identified First Officer LeRoy Homer as the man who was shouting.
On the morning of September 11, Flight 93 was the only hijacked aircraft to broadcast a distress call. It is likely that because the pilots had been made aware of the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and were on alert for cockpit intrusion, when they came under attack, they keyed the microphone so the struggle might be overheard by controllers on the ground. Cleveland Center air traffic controller John Werth believed it was not just a call for help but a warning.
The exact time at which Flight 93 came under the hijackers' control cannot be determined. Officials believe that at around 09:28, the hijackers killed passenger Mark Rothenberg, 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. With many passengers saying in phone calls that they saw only three hijackers, the 9/11 Commission believed Jarrah remained seated until after the cockpit was seized and passengers were moved to the back of the aircraft and then took over the flight controls out of sight of the passengers. Then Ziad and Saeed took control of the plane.
The cockpit voice recorder began recording the final thirty minutes of Flight 93 at 09:31:57. At this moment, it recorded Jarrah announcing, "Ladies and gentlemen: here the captain. [sic] Please sit down, keep remaining seating. [sic] 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 40,700 feet (12,400 m) and air traffic controllers immediately moved several aircraft out of Flight 93's flightpath. The woman in the cockpit is heard to say, "I don't want to die, I don't want to die" before being killed or otherwise silenced, followed by one of the hijackers saying in Arabic, "Everything is fine. I finished."
At 09:39, two minutes after Flight 77 impacted the Pentagon, air traffic controllers overheard Jarrah say, "Hi, this is the captain: [sic] I would like to order you to remain seated. There's a bomb aboard, and we are going back to the airport, and we have our demands. So please remain quiet." 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.