United Airlines 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. One person witnessed the impact from the ground, and news agencies began reporting the event within an hour. In the ensuing struggle, the plane nosedived into a field near a reclaimed strip mine in Stonycreek Township, near Indian Lake and Shanksville, about 65 miles (105 km) southeast of Pittsburgh and 130 miles (210 km) northwest of the capital. By 9:57 a.m., only 29 minutes after the plane had been hijacked, the passengers had made the decision to fight back in an effort to gain control of the aircraft. The hijackers' decision to wait an additional 46 minutes to launch their assault meant that the people being held hostage on the flight very quickly found out that suicide attacks had already been made by hijacked airliners on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, near D.C. The plane was already 42 minutes behind schedule by the time it took off. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, considered principal instigators of the attacks, have claimed that the intended target was the U.S. 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. The airliner involved, a Boeing 757-222 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.įorty-six minutes into the flight, the hijackers murdered one passenger, stormed the cockpit, and struggled with the pilots as controllers on the ground listened in. The mission became a partial failure when the passengers fought back, forcing the terrorists to crash the plane in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, preventing them from reaching al-Qaeda's intended target but killing everyone on-board the flight.

The hijackers planned to crash the plane into a federal government building in the national capital of Washington, D.C. United Airlines Flight 93 was a domestic scheduled passenger flight that was hijacked by four al-Qaeda terrorists on the morning of September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. Newark Int'l Airport (now Newark Liberty Int'l Airport) UA 93's flight path from Newark, New Jersey, to Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvaniaįield ( Flight 93 National Memorial) near the Diamond T.

Second Chances by Deborah McClatchey