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Flight 93 Facts

Flight 93 Facts
United Airlines Flight 93, often just referred to as "Flight 93," was one of the planes hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists on 9-11-2001 in the United States. The Boeing 757-222 airplane left Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey on the morning of September 11 bound for San Francisco, California with forty-four passengers, which included four terrorists, and seven crew members. Flight 93 became known because about half an hour after the four hijackers took it over, just before 10 am, the passengers learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York and decided to revolt. Although Flight 93 went down in a field about sixty miles southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the revolting passengers have been credited as heroes, more than likely preventing a much larger attack, possibly on the White House.
Interesting Flight 93 Facts:
The hijacker crew was led by Ziad Jarrah. Like most of the 911 hijackers, Jarrah was educated and came from a middleclass background. His background allowed him to enter the United States legally with relatively little suspicion.
It is believed that there were supposed to be five Flight 93 hijackers. The WTC and Pentagon hijackers were each comprised of five man teams. It is believed that a man named Mohammad al-Qahtani, who was denied entry into the U.S. on suspicion that he intended to illegally immigrate. Al-Qahtani was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in late 2001 and has been held at Guantanamo Bay since that time.
Flight 93 was far under its passenger capacity of 182.
The hijackers took over Flight 93 at about 9:30 am. Pilot Jason Dahl and first officer Leroy Homer Junior were immediately attacked, although Dahl apparently survived the initial attack and attempted to sabotage the hijackers before he too was killed.
Shanksville, Pennsylvania is the town nearest to where Flight 93 crashed into an open field.
After the initial hijacking, passengers of Flight 93 learned via airplane phones and cellphones about the attacks on the WTC towers and the Pentagon.
Jarrah told the passengers to remain seated and that there was a bomb on board.
Thirty-two-year-old Illinois resident Todd Beamer was one of the leaders of the passenger revolt. Beamer got together with Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, and Jeremy Glick to lead the revolt, but were later joined by both male and female passengers.
According to a call he was on with GTE airphone supervisor Lisa Jefferson, Beamer and the others hoped to subdue or kill the hijackers and fly the plane to safety with help from the ground.
Beamer's last words were, "Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."
Flight 93 was about to be shot down by Airforce fighters when it crashed. Vice President Dick Cheney said, "I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane."
A makeshift memorial was immediately created on the crash site, which later became a permanent memorial. A white marble wall with the names of the passengers was opened to the public in 2011.


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