Flight 93 Research Paper

The morning of September 11, 2001 started off as any other. Who would have expected the deadliest terrorist attack the United States has ever had. An Islamic extremist known as al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes all with very important targets. American Airlines Flight 11 with United Airlines Flight 175 struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The Pentagon was hit by American Airlines 77 (History.com 1). United Airlines Flight 93 was the only hijacked plane that didn’t reach it’s target. The courageous passengers aboard Flight 93, who overtook four hijackers and prevented even more loss of life than the forty-four people aboard, crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. United Flight 93 was scheduled …show more content…
Flight 93 departed at 8:42 a.m. that morning, running 25 minutes late (9/11 Commission 10). Aboard Flight 93 were thirty-seven passengers including the four hijackers(9/11 Commission 11) and seven crew members (History.com 2). This was a much smaller amount of passengers than normal (9/11 Commission 11) holding less the half the maximum capacity (History.com 2). United flight dispatcher, Ed Ballinger, was warning flights of possible cockpit intrusions. The transmission was received at 9:23 a.m., Captain Jason Dahl responded for clarification (History.com 3). The passengers were unaware of hijacking (9/11 Commision 10) until the hijackers attacked the cockpit at 9:28 a.m. (9/11 Commission 11). The hijackers took 46 minutes after takeoff to takeover gaining control of the plane (9/11 Commission 11). When the terrorists were in the cockpit, there were two mayday calls, sounds of struggle (History.com 3), and then the plane suddenly dropped 700 feet (9/11 Commission 11). There were only four hijackers on Flight 93, while the other 3 flights all had teams of five (9/11 Commission 11). Jarrah was the hijacker who became the pilot of the plane. He attended Florida Flight Training Center in Venice, Florida, receiving a single-engine