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Details Emerge on Flight 93
by Matthew L. Wald, New York Times. EFL. LRR.*The 9/11 Commission Report includes the most detailed after-action report yet on the "93rd Volunteer Infantry." The idea of a hijacking on Sept. 11, 2001, was unbelievable, even to many of the people who could have responded in time to change the course of events. One of those was Capt. Jason Dahl of United Flight 93, which had taken off from Newark on a flight to San Francisco. . . . I'm not sure that lead is fair to Captain Dahl; as you read on, you find out that he really didn't have time to do anything. A United Airlines dispatcher near Chicago who knew that Flight 175 had been hijacked and crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center sent a message to the other planes he was following that morning, one of them United 93. In a text message, the dispatcher, Ed Ballinger, told Flight 93 at 9:23 a.m.: "Beware any cockpit intrusion two a/c hit World Trade Center." At 9:26, Captain Dahl sent a message back, in quick, abbreviated and slightly mistyped language: "Ed, confirm latest mssg plz Jason." Two minutes later, the hijackers attacked Captain Dahl and his first officer. Unlike the three other hijackings, Flight 93 continued transmitting over the radio during the struggle in the cockpit. The captain or first officer declared "Mayday," and 35 seconds later, one of them shouted, "Hey, get out of here get out of here get out of here." Later, passengers reported seeing two bodies outside the cockpit, injured or dead, probably the pilots. Once the hijackers were in control, they knew that passengers were using cell phones and seat-back phones to call the ground "but did not seem to care," according to the report. Yet clearly what the passengers learned in those phone calls inspired their counterattack on the cockpit. . . . "It might not have occurred to [the hijackers] that they [meaning the passengers] were certain to learn what had happened in New York, thereby defeating his attempts at deception," the report said. The report indicates that Mr. Jarrah, at the controls of United 93, did what many airline pilots have fantasized about since the hijackings: tried to maneuver the plane sharply, rolling and pitching, to keep control of the cockpit. It apparently did not work; the plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania. The report does not clarify whether the hijackers' goal for Flight 93 was the White House or the Capitol, but indicates that the hijackers tuned a cockpit radio to the frequency of a navigation beacon at National Airport, just across the Potomac River from the capital, erasing any doubt about the region of their intended destination. At three seconds after 10 a.m., Mr. Jarrah is heard on the cockpit voice recorder saying: "Is that it? Shall we finish it off?" But another hijacker responds: "No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off." The voice recorder captured sounds of continued fighting, and Mr. Jarrah pitched the plane up and then down. A passenger is heard to say, "In the cockpit. If we don't we'll die!" Then a passenger yelled "Roll it!" Some aviation experts have speculated that this was a reference to a food cart, being used as a battering ram. Mr. Jarrah "stopped the violent maneuvers" at 10:01:00, according to the report, and said, "Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!" "He then asked another hijacker in the cockpit, `Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?' to which the other replied, `Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.' " Eighty seconds later, a hijacker is heard to say, "Pull it down! Pull it down!" "The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them," according to the report, which seems to indicate that the hijackers themselves crashed the plane. "With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes' flying time from Washington, D.C," according to the report. *Feel free to use the following: login = nytisfishwrap password = dowdsucksSPAN> Posted by: Mike 2004-07-23 |
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